fl 



mm 



BLGSSING m 



JllLiA DAVeNPORT RANDAL 








Class. Ll'5EijLk.3\ 

Book 7F? £?.>? 

Copyright N^ 



COPXRIGHI' DEPOSnv 



BLESSING ESAU 



EXPERIMENTS IN HIGH SCHOOL 
ENGLISH-TEACHING 



BY 



JULIA DAVENPORT RANDALL 




BOSTON 

RICHARD G. BADGER 

THE GORHAM PRESS 



Copyright, 1919, by Richaed G. Badger 



All Rights Reserved 



iPp 



OGi I I '191b 



Made in the United States of America 



The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 



(g)ci,A5'}r5:r;a 



FOREWORD 

n^HE lost coin which the woman found after a 
-'- long and dusty search was not so valuable, 
perhaps, as to pay for her effort. And the lost 
sheep prized by the shepherd was only one per 
cent of the flock, and a hungry sheep at that. I 
have always thot that the ninety and nine must 
have furnished a better quality of wool. Then too 
the shepherd's time was worth something. The 
desirability of his rescue-work might have been 
doubted by an Efficiency-Expert. Some way, tho, 
one always wants to clap when these two good 
folks found what they sought. One understands 
their rejoicing; a sentimental thing, but we under- 
stand it because we too are sentimental. If shep- 
herds impair their power to look after the many 
by their care of the few, — that indeed might be a 
matter for the Efficiency-Man. However it would 
be a nice matter to prove that they do, for good 
shepherding is useful to the ninety and nine ; doubt- 
less there wouldn't be ninety-nine of them if they 
hadn't a good shepherd. 

My small experiments in going after the chll- 
3 



4 Foreword 

dren or classes that were for some reason not of 
the ninety and nine have covered the last ten 
years or more, and I have tried several times most 
of the problems taken up here. I am sometimes 
inclined, right in class, to laugh at myself for a sort 
of hortatory, evangelistic tone which also colors 
my accounts of my work. This must come from 
a pastoral ancestry; tho perhaps it is rather a trait 
of worldly sea-faring forebears, who were never 
satisfied unless they brot back as well as carried 
out a full cargo. 

My dear ninety and nine have given me solid 
satisfaction, and they have upheld my good opin- 
ion by succeeding; what I call succeeding in youth- 
ful fashion, in many lines of work. And so too 
have my odd ones, who had required much search- 
ing and time on my part. There for instance is 
Jack. ("Flunked Six! Can you beat it? Wanted 
enthymemes, he did. Do you reckon I'd have 
squeaked thru if I'd known what an enthymeme 
was?") Yet Jack has squeaked thru two years 
of ambulance driving because he didn't know 
what Fear was, and he has a Croix de Guerre. 
And there was Wilfred, who stood on the burn- 
ing deck and was one of the heroes of a great 
magazine article. And there was Harry, with his 
missionary atheism, and his busy, foreign, turbu- 
lent Pacifism! Bolshevik in theory, he proved a 



' Foreword \ 5 

faithful soldier, faithful to the end. And must his 
mouth be cold? No; I seem to hear Harry, actu- 
ally talking again and saying: "Would it really 
be a poor journey if a man comes to the House of 
Hades and finds all the heroes who became just 
men in their own lives? . . . For my part I 
should wish to die many times, if these tales are 
true. Then what a wonderful time together the 
two of us would have, whenever I met . . . any 
of the ancient warriors 1 The greatest thing of 
all is, to find out by questioning and searching 
into the people — there as well as here — which of 
them is Wise. To discourse with the folk there 
and be in their company, — that would be a wholly 
unimagined happiness." 

Children like these are only part of the story. 
Children of another sort, those to whom we can 
give only a little because their necessities call them 
away from school so soon; these too have in my 
experience often met with an unexpected degree 
of success. Two girls came to see me the other 
Sunday; Anna, a two-year business-student, who 
has a job, and Ruth, a Teachers'-College gradu- 
ate, who has a position. They are two admirable 
girls, both happy in helping their mothers send 
the younger children thru school. When Anna's 
father died, and Ruth's father had to go South, 
I felt more anxious for Anna, because she had 



6 Foreword 

had relatively so little given to her to work upon. 
But Anna, who has been out of school only three 
years, now runs a small branch office for her 
company, and knows incredible amounts about 
Cement. She modestly attributes her having se- 
cured a position at once to her being tall and 
having some speed. For "tall" I emend and say 
"Dignified and reliable," and to her speed I add 
a good degree of accuracy. They are a good 
pair, these two. Their earning powers are not 
greatly different, and their pretty manners, good 
taste in dress, and girlish joy in life seem to put 
them really on the same basis. When I see cases 
like Anna's I am encouraged about our short-time 
courses. 

My experiments sometimes seem to me not to 
smack sufficiently of scientific sharpness and effi- 
ciency. I respect those two things, and do not 
presume to think them tiresome even if they are 
at present rather over-estimated. I too bow the 
knee in the House of Rimmon; that is, sometimes, 
once a year, maybe, when our complicated final 
reports go in. The rest of the time, like Naaman, 
I worship the True God. I know how scattering 
our efforts would be, without method, and certain 
kinds of careful planning and book-keeping. But, 
after all, it is the easy jobs in which Efficiency 
helps us, and it helps us very much, giving us time 



Foreword ' 7 

to do the real work of the day. This same Effi- 
ciency is the very substance of things tangible — 
of things which need no evidence, for there they 
are. When it has taken us on as far as it can, 
we need an evidence of things not seen, as a sub- 
stance of things hoped for. Older teachers know 
that we sometimes do see just the things hoped 
for. Anna, young Hagar in the wilderness, finds 
springs of water. Jack's gay nonchalance about 
taking a chance has brot serious men back from 
death. Harry has laid down his pacifism and his 
life that the word of one of his nation might come 
true, and all nations might cease to learn war. 
This justification of Faith has so often come to 
the teacher of experience, that she begins to be- 
lieve that her hope for the slow, the giddy, the 
perverse, is really an evidence of things not seen. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

My Bridge Approach 13 

Blessing Esau 30 

The Program as Project 48 

Special Six 66 

Last Word 84 

Dictation Exercises 

Grizzled Peter 93 

The Journey-Companions 98 

Black Diamond 103 

Herbert Hoover, the Food Controller 107 

How* Thias Came Up in the World . . iii 



BLESSING ESAU 



I 



BLESSING ESAU 



MY BRIDGE-APPROACH 

SEE a bridge," said I, "standing in the midst 
of the tide." 



Our town has a free bridge which was long 
noted for the striking fact that, while it was an 
imposing structure, it had no approaches. "Now 
learn a parable of the free bridge," I have often 
told my lazier self when she suggested that it is 
a drudgery to make things plain to children. 
"What's the good of that triumph of educational 
engineering, those illustrious arches of your own 
erudition, of which you are so justly proud, if you 
can't show good approaches on the student side?" 

Thus chidden, my mind has been working over- 
time, in a way which my more-organized fellows 
in the building profession would never suffer, to 
make an approach to English as we give it in the 
high schools of our city. Most of our children 
find the approach from the eighth-grade English 

By permission of The English Journal. 

13 



14 Blessing Esau 

ample, but fifteen per cent do not and must man- 
age to muddle along some way or drown in the 
tide beneath. Fifteen per cent would be a great 
many kittens to drown ; as for children — du lieber 
Himmell 

From much experience, I know that some chil- 
dren who fail are plainly lazy, and some hard 
workers are handicapped too much and must soon 
go under. Between these, however, are many in- 
teresting and sensible children suffering from 
specific weaknesses which can be helped, if one 
has time and mind to undertake it. I have often 
tried to help such children in regular classes, but 
have failed; or at least the results were hardly 
visible, while in a special class they are quite ap- 
parent. There has even been a certain feeling of 
satisfaction on the part of the class that they were 
at last accomplishing something. Their attitude 
has at times reminded me of the frank remark 
of a young guest I once entertained: "I didn't 
expect to have a good time, but it's been great." 

The experiment described here took place in 
one of the larger St. Louis high-schools, where 
crowded conditions, later relieved, led to high 
failure averages. Our first half-year ended with 
a group of forty-five "repeaters" in English i, 
some of whom were to try again the third or even 
the fourth time. These were put into two divl- 



My Bridge-Approach 15 

sions under different teachers, and my class num- 
bered eight girls and thirteen boys. To base 
many conclusions on this small number would be 
misleading, except that in such a class one finds 
on a large scale the same weaknesses to which one 
is always tracing failures in unsifted classes. I 
mean such weakneses as bad writing and spelling, 
incoherent sentences, and unintelligent reading. 
My specials were mostly bad spellers. The 
papers of the better ones, when read aloud, 
sounded very much like the papers of my second- 
term students, but they looked worse, both in 
spelling and in handwriting. From my specials I 
heard of "shinning morning faces" and "gently 
slopping roofs." And "roughings" (meaning; 
ruins) was an experiment of one of them. Some 
of them wrote labyrinthine sentences, and others 
at first wrote none at all, letting original compo- 
sition work go by default. One sentence that I 
saved several days came from some notes on a 
"Wayside Inn" story called by the annotator 
"The Kobbler of Hagenau." It runs thus: "In- 
dulgence means that if you by a letter of which a 
monk was going around selling it for the purpose 
of building the church at Rome called St. Peters- 
bury that all your sins would be forgiven and the 
people thot they would go to Heaven when they 
died." That sort of sentence building may be 



1 6 Blessing Esau 

pretty bad, but the unintelligent silent reading, 
which was the rule in this class, was almost worse, 
for it was ominous of failure in other things, and 
it set a huge mountain in the way of reading alone 
for pleasure. 

Most of this was evident during the first two 
or three class hours. It took, longer to diagnose 
the failure in silent reading, and I haven't really 
— as Lincoln might have said — "come down to 
the raisins" on that yet. That is, my remedy for 
it is more oral reading, which partly begs the 
question. Since we all heard speech and music 
before we knew letters or notes, however. It may 
be that oral reading will lead to more intelligent 
silent reading. One of my little girls said to me 
once: "Can't we read to-day's work out loud? 
I didn't understand It at all." Her comment and 
many other signs made me think that this group 
of children were simply not eye-minded. Only 
two have particular defects of vision to which 
their parents' attention has been called, and I 
think them real exceptions, for they like to read 
to themselves and probably can carry their work 
well in the future. All of them are greedy listen- 
ers to reading aloud and remember It well. 

The shortage in visual impressions is partly 
compensated for in different ways. The "Kob- 
bler" boy plays the violin and is an athlete, while 



My Bridge-Approach ! 17 

one girl is what is called a graduate in piano. As 
a class, they show a good ear in detecting wrong 
accents, a capability which some brilliant children 
lack. And in this class alone, of all I have ever 
had, a New Englandism of my own pronunciation 
was respectfully pointed out. I had never ob- 
served it before, but the critics' ears were right. 
Then, they are strong on the motor side. While 
they pay little attention generally to pictures and, 
unlike my other younger pupils, seldom mention 
the "movies," I think that they might themselves 
be considered "movies." They are stirring chil- 
dren, awaking to enthusiasm about sports and ma- 
chinery, and they would recognize a "19 15 
model" far more quickly than their eye-minded 
teacher. Four or five of them — almost half my 
quota — took part in our Shakespeare Tercente- 
nary pageant, and "did me proud." One of them 
was once copying, in my room, while an older 
class was having a discussion of current events. 
A lad was trying, in connection with something 
else, to explain a new appliance to a steam en- 
gine, but was not making himself very clear. My 
special — he was the "Indulgences" boy — looked 
so eager to explain that I set the child among the 
elders, as it were, and he acquitted himself well. 
He probably would have told you that wasn't 
English; that was sense. I understand that the 



1 8 Blessing Esau 

motor-mlndedness of the girls makes several of 
them stars in domestic science. One who would 
not at first make a struggle in her English (she 
had become so discouraged) proved this when, 
during the absence of their teacher, I was called 
upon to sit with the sewing class to which she be- 
longed. I observed her for nearly a week, and 
she understood so much better than I did the di- 
rections of another sewing teacher who came in 
and assigned the work, that — with what decent 
disguises I might — I followed a Dickens prece- 
dent: I called on my little special to "give my 
opinion" on questions that arose. She was the 
real substitute. 

This tentative conclusion about the children's 
impressions followed various experiments. The 
class read "Tales of a Wayside Inn" — rather 
from expediency than from my choice — and one 
experiment was this: after having a good part of 
the more interesting stories read aloud, at first by 
the teacher and gradually by the children, I wrote 
characteristic quotations from them on the black- 
board, and the children had only partial success 
in recognizing them; but when I read other sim- 
ilar selections aloud there was a cloud of eager 
witnesses, either accurate or lucky in their an- 
swers. On several of these the whole class vol- 
unteered. Another indication of the same sort is 



My Bridge-Approach > 19 

that this division remembered the proper names in 
the Dickens story which I read them better than 
my regular divisions in second term, to whom I 
read the same novel. 

While I was getting the class used to the sound 
of their own voices, for they had been silent mem-, 
bers of previous classes, I used a great deal of 
dictation work, having some done every day. 
This I had corrected and copied into notebooks. 
By the end of the semester, these books contained 
from fifty to seventy pages of manuscript half- 
foolscap size. Of course the notebooks still con- 
tain rnany inaccuracies. I have required the pu- 
pils to rewrite any page containing four or more 
mistakes or erasures and one student had to do 
ten pages a second time, while two others were 
nearly as careless. Four of the girls have books 
of very good appearance. In one of these — not 
the best — I counted fifty-three pages free from 
errors and erasures to fifteen containing one or 
more. One boy could show as good a notebook 
as this, but generally, although the children's for- 
mer teachers notice the boy's progress as much 
as the girl's, the boys started a little lower down 
In the matter of form, and their books are some- 
what less satisfactory. 

The dictation books have several sorts of ma- 
terial. The selection which I gave the class dur- 



20 Blessing Esau 

ing the first days, Laboulaye's "Grizzled Peter," 
is frankly humorous, and I was charmed to see 
that the writers' faces, at first bored and a trifle 
sullen, were soon illuminated with grins. The 
other two long stories were from German 
sources: "The Journey Companions," an allegory 
from a collection called "Aus meiner Welt," and 
another, which I have not lately looked up, but 
which I called "Black Diamond," a humorous, 
half-allegorical account of a little Moor and a 
Golden Princess, both of whom changed color. 
These stories, as well as the biographical and 
other articles in the notebook, were rewritten for 
the use of this class, so as to illustrate the rules 
of spelling and punctuation for which I was hold- 
ing my specials responsible. At the very first, I 
spelled names and unusual words and called at- 
tention myself to the punctuation. Later, while I 
still spelled names and unusual words, I would 
stop the writing from time to time and ask where 
there had been cases of words in series, where 
direct quotations, just what words were quoted, 
etc. This was the medicine, and I sugar-coated 
it as well as I could with local references and mild 
jokes, since I found that a good method for this 
particular group. After these three stories I 
wanted something sounding in moral virtue, and 
gave them some verses to which a friend who is a 



My Bridge-Approach 21 

social worker had called my attention. A sample 
of this poem is: 

You can do as much as you think you can, 
But you'll never accomplish more; 

If you are afraid of yourself, young man. 
There's little for you in store. 

For failure comes from the inside first. 

I think this serious little "penny-worth of 
bread" has gone very well with the more spark- 
ling "sack." Besides these, we had various items 
in connection with the "Wayside Inn" work. The 
greatest favorite in that division of their books 
was a gossipy and partly lengendary account of 
Charlemagne (the tone being taken from that of 
the Longfellow poems). Would it shock any 
gentle reader to hear it hinted that a boy said 
(not to his teacher) that "Charlemange was a 
regular guy"? Those children are not fond of 
pictures, but they did look interestedly at several 
pictures and one small souvenir connected with 
"Charlemange." The afore-mentioned mispro- 
nunciation, I must add, was celebrated with ap- 
propriate ceremonies, though I had once heard 
that same thing in church and had seen not one 
quiver of an eyelid in my part of the congrega- 
tion. The last items in the book were letter 



22 Blessing Esau 

forms and short crams on the "Iliad" and 
"Odyssey" stories; left-overs from our usual first- 
term work in which these students had failed. 
From previous work with some of them I realized 
that a minimum of this Homer work was the best 
thing for them, but I did not want them to leave 
it behind quite unconquered. 

So much for the notebooks. They contain 
some original work, mostly notes on outside read- 
ing, but not much. I thought this was a case 
where it was best not to press "the barren wits 
of striplings" for a useless output, when I might 
be helping them to form some habits of no small 
usefulness. When I said that their summaries of 
the Dickens story read to them compare well, 
except as to form, with those written by their con- 
temporaries who passed English i, I meant 
that I have actually read these little stories to 
other critical people, and the hearers have been 
unable to detect the work of the "specials." My 
confidence in the value of dictation work in form- 
ing good habits has been growing with experi- 
ence, and the other day it received confirmation 
from an unexpected source. A friend of mine, 
who is by no means a "hyphenated American" in 
a bad sense, speaks and writes English in an un- 
usually good style. One would never believe that 
she had heard a foreign language spoken at 



My Bridge-Approach 23 

home, had not attended the public schools, and 
had not even been accustomed to an English 
church service. She was for nineteen years the 
stenographer of a man who used choice English, 
and the other day, when I complimented her on 
her literary style, she said: "I think that much 
of my education in English was just taking Mr. 
R's dictation. I couldn't make an awkward or 
slipshod sentence now without feeling that I was 
doing wrong." Our long stretch of dictation 
work has been worth while because it gave the 
needed combination of auditory, motor and visual 
impressions in the beginning; and reading it aloud 
after copying it into the notebooks gave the same 
combination in a different order. I did not have 
it read aloud until I had marked the first-draft 
papers, and the students had corrected the mis- 
takes as far as they could, for the threefold im- 
pression must be as nearly accurate as we could 
make it. There has been "an intolerable deal" of 
correcting for all of us, but it has not been wasted. 
The much-described notebooks gave us part 
of our material for oral readings, which I empha- 
sized during one-quarter of the term. In this 
work I followed a hint given at a National Coun- 
cil meeting. A speaker there reported an experi- 
ment in eighth-grade oral reading in a foreign 
section, where pronunciation and sentence accent 



24 Blessing Esau 

were bad. She had the children read aloud at 
home daily for stated periods, members of their 
families cooperating in recording the practice 
time. In only one case did I have to seek any 
home cooperation in my group, for the good ef- 
fect of the practice showed so plainly. I had told 
the children to read with exaggerated emphasis 
rather than too quietly, and one boy told me that 
he was reading the sporting page to a housemate 
who differed from him in baseball sympathies, 
and that he "always read the Cards' victories 
very loud." (His work was so well motivated 
that I had not the heart, just then, to insinuate 
anything against the sort of English he was read- 
ing. It was at least fully as good as his.) While 
this home-reading was going on, we read at sight 
in class. I found the "Boy Scouts' Magazine" 
and "St. Nicholas" good for this purpose, and the 
final sight-reading test was on the "Boy's Life of 
Mark Twain." It went well, the most nervous 
children, two who could read to me only in private 
at first, doing very fairly. A silent-reading test 
from a botany textbook was less satisfactory, in 
so far as it resulted in too close adherence to 
the language of the book, which was, however, 
not at hand when the report was made. 

The general conclusion that I have reached 
from this part of the work is that these children 



My Bridge-Approach 25 

will do well to study aloud. Is it, after all, such 
eternal disgrace not to get one's best impressions 
through the eye? To quote a wise man from the 
East, "If the whole body were an eye, where 
were the hearing?" But it seems hard for schools 
to give full credit to the unfashionable child-mind 
that is not all "an eye"; for this is a generation 
when some people study singing by correspon- 
dence, when they "see" operas, and even call an 
oratorio a show. 

How to make more of auditory and motor Im- 
ages Is a question the answer to which must be 
framed differently for different classes. Far be it 
from me to say that the teachers ought to talk 
more. That remark about vain repetitions infers 
that we simply cease to be heard by reason of 
our much speaking. The voices whose impres- 
sions last are not necessarily the voices of teach- 
ers, though a teacher can do much with judgment 
and a good voice. My specials have often un- 
consciously quoted one girl whose prettily spoken 
phrases have lingered in their memories. More 
than a dozen years ago I visited a Chicago grade 
school which Is now well housed; but then the 
children were reciting in the ill-hghted halls, and 
one fell over them on the stairs. The necessary 
noises Indoors and the clamor from the streets 
made an endless hubbub, which sharpened the 



26 Blessing Esau 

teachers' voices and made the discipline harsh. 
The children were chiefly Italian, and some were 
just beginning to understand English. It was a 
place to drive any one to despair. I was hearing 
a lifeless grammar lesson when the teacher pro- 
posed that the children read us things that they 
liked from their readers. There was a breath, 
a stir, a noticeable thrill; a slender, Raphael-faced 
youngster was suddenly upon his feet, and then 
came something delightful that has often flashed 
upon my inner ear. "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace 
bled" was young Raphael's choice. The other 
selections were hackneyed, but some way, that 
day, living and lovely. Who would have thot 
the old lines had so much blood? The whole 
class lived intensely those precious minutes. The 
street noise seemed to stop. It was all like some- 
thing religious. What is more, the teacher had 
clearly stood aside and let the children do it with 
their wonderful Italian voices. She had that 
high degree of skill. They did not get an intona- 
tion from her, at least by imitation, for her voice 
had been sacrificed to her surroundings. Consid- 
ering the needs of that class, I thought that the 
teacher was adapting means to an end In using 
auditory Impressions In a way that has ever since 
commanded my admiration. 



My Bridge-Approach 27 

In speaking of the practical psychological 
phases of my experiment, I may have told a great 
deal indirectly about the personal side, but must 
not omit some other facts. I believe that our 
two special classes warmed up the English De- 
partment a degree or two. The teacher of the 
other division is also of that opinion. Only one 
child made anything at all hke a complaint of a 
former teacher's dealings, and those under 
whom my specials failed have been truly inter- 
ested in their success, have examined specimens 
of their work and cooperated cordially. Many 
of the parents have been intelligently appreciative 
of what we are trying to do. The children have 
felt that this class was on a different basis, have 
come in before or after school for little calls, have 
shown an interest In each other in illness or 
trouble that Is unusual in this large school. Of 
course it has not all been fair weather, but it has 
been possible to run the class upon a minimum of 
fault-finding, on a principle expounded by one of 
my friends, who could coax a good trot out of a 
horse that only ambled for other drivers. "You 
see," she explained, "I'm left-handed. I whip 
him in a new spot." The new spot in this case 
is the idea that the school Is helping them up their 
hill of difficulty. "See only, son," said one good 



2 8 Blessings Esau 

German-American mother, "how the teacher is on 
your side ! So you must work." In time of need 
a very light touch on that spot was enough. 

This was the way I had hoped it could be done 
— by a little more understanding and cooperation. 
As a step toward the understanding, I had tried, 
with lively memories of Dr. Judd and Madam 
Montessori, to experiment on, and observe myself 
in, the process of blundering. My experiments 
were motor and auditory-motor. My attempts 
to learn tatting were about as successful as the 
efforts of my specials to spell Homeric names. 
As to the rest, I think "The bous Appollo" must 
have all but launched an arrow at me when he 
heard me reading along softly with the tenors 
and basses in the serious chorus to which I belong. 
Such experiments have given me more concrete 
ideas of the children's difficulties and have added 
to my own feeling that we were co-workers. 

Perhaps young teachers would think children 
like my specials need only to repeat the course in 
which they have failed and that such repetition 
is disciplinary. We older ones do not see it quite 
so flatly. "It's they simple things," as the Dart- 
moor mother says, "that have oftenest got a kink 
in 'em." Another "great perhaps" is that the ap- 
proach, good and gradual as it is, may be too 
easy; for the bridge is after all hard to cross_> 



My Bridge-Approach 29 

Like the one Mirza saw standing in the mid I 
the tide, this bridge has many pitfalls, and . 
child whose feet we have set upon the first area 
may run straight into one of these. Still, I think 
the chances are good the other way, too; for 
not faUing thru, but passing safely over. The 
program cards show that half these specials 
dropped out of school during the next two years. 
Of these I have seen one girl from my class, who 
was preparing for Vassar when home-calls took 
her out of school. I have heard from two boys 
in the Navy and am glad to say that they write 
good, clear letters. He whose mother divined 
"on whose side the teacher was," shows — to judge 
by his picture — as much development and general 
improvement as any school could have given him. 
The little girl with the pretty voice finished her 
course in schedule time. Several members of the 
class have received the Soldan S, for various rea- 
sons, not excluding scholarship. I am far from 
assuming that my colleague and I built the whole 
approach without which they would have 
drowned. But my point is that we reduced the 
"drowned" from fifteen to about eleven per cent; 
that each of our special classes "salvaged" all the 
members but one, and that half of these went on 
across the bridge. 



BLESSING ESAU 

ESAU cried with an exceeding great and 
bitter cry. Hast thou but one blessing, O 
my father? Bless me, even me also, O my father. 
And Esau lifted up his voice and wept." 

Yes, this pretty old Bible-saying is sentimen- 
tally applied. You are right. Furthermore, my 
young Esaus would not thank me for the com- 
parison. These little short-time students are in- 
dependent and self respecting. My mind's ear 
hears two of them comment on the idea that theirs 
is a hard case. I hear George, who "looks suc- 
cessfully" and Madeline, with her long braids 
and her merry, sidelong glances. "An exceeding 
great and bitter cry. . . . Gee ! Whad-do-you- 
know about that?" "Bless me, even me also. . . , 
GoOD-night nurse !" Yes, that is what they would 
say. But it was not in his earliest youth that the 
older Esau missed his birth-right and regretted it. 
Tho most of our two-year commercials are 
happily unconscious of what the world offers to 
the prepared, we, their teachers, are not so un- 

30 



Blessing Esau 31 

concerned. We know that in most cases they can 
go no farther, and we want to make their short 
period of English study all it can be, lest we giv^ 
all the blessing to Jacob when Esau has more 
need of blessing. 

A two-year Commercial Course is not a lovely 
thing, but it appears to be a necessity. The New 
London, Connecticut, system prefaces this course 
by a study of commercial subjects in seventh and 
eighth grades, a pre-commercial course; because 
the management thinks that not enough can be 
done in ninth and tenth grades to be practically 
useful to the student. In St. Louis we still give 
a laborious two-year course in business subjects, 
and the increasing demand for it proves at least 
that it is thought to be useful. We have a good 
grade of rather young children taking this course. 
It appears, from cases which I have looked into, 
that a large number of them can afford to go to 
school only until they are old enough to get their 
working-papers. They are often children who 
have been promoted once or more in the grades, 
and they reach us immature and young. These 
children take their strictly commercial work with 
the utmost seriousness, a seriousness which some- 
times shows itself in the explanation, "I didn't 
get my theme wrote because I had to work on 
stenography." They realize that they will 



32 Blessing Esau 

"need" their stenography, and do not realize in 
many cases, that they "need" a different sort of 
English from that of their daily life. The teach- 
ers of these business branches have a straight- 
ahead job, not easy with young pupils, but possi- 
ble. We have no such straight and narrow path 
to follow, but I trust that our task, too, is possible. 
We have decided lately in St. Louis, that one- 
half of our present four-year course is not the 
thing to offer to Esau. To think of such a thing 
suggests Solomon's judgment about the two 
babies. We have now to come out into the open 
and say what George and Madeline ought to have 
in their short two years. In defining this course 
we shall blunder, but blunders may in time be 
corrected. Certainly if we never clearly define 
our task we shall keep on blundering. Our pres- 
ent course is not regarded as anything final; we 
may continue with altogether separate work for 
two-year and four-year students, a course we have 
followed since 191 6, or we may so define the 
four-years' work that one-half of it will form a 
somewhat unified course; a little cycle which can 
be enlarged for the student who is to stay longer. 
We used to give our short-time commercials one- 
half of a "once-over" course, and we used to have 
many failures in the last term; many children 
failed, that is, who could perfectly well do the 



Blessing Esau 33 

routine work in business, with which any one 
would trust beginners. This failure meant sim- 
ply that the student couldn't deal with Addison, 
Coleridge, Lamb, and certain Romanticists be- 
sides, whose names are written in the Golden 
Treasury. There appears to be much the same 
sort of connection between these subjects and the 
two-year business course that we see in the classic 
riddle about the "Elephant, oyster and crab-apple 
tree" of our childhood. However, I do not wish 
to take a frivolous view of this phase of the 
subject. If the elephant chases the oyster up the 
crab-apple tree (all according to the condition) 
perhaps one can compute therefrom "how many 
shoe-strings it will take to fatten a lamp-post." 
To one who cannot combine these data, however, 
they must needs be regarded as useless, highly 
tho we ourselves prize them. And an inex- 
perienced two-year student cannot carry his pro- 
gram, full of practicing that cannot be compressed 
or hastened, and do much calm thinking on diffi- 
cult literary points. Some way it seems that he 
cannot connect the course we used to give him 
with himself to any vital degree. "A person or 
a poet," one of my students once wrote, giving 
me in this expression a good image of the remote- 
ness of his English study from his daily self. 
"Christ's Hospital is found in England on the 



34 Blessing Esau 

Tiber and is very old," suggested another. "All 
the crew," said a third, "died and left their bodies 
on the deck with the exception of the many dread- 
ful animals of the sea." These are samples of 
the confusion which I used to find in the themes 
of over-worked commercial students in their last 
term in school. In our present course the Litera- 
ture work is much less in quantity, and is different 
in quality, to the loss, perhaps, of the unusually 
gifted few; but, I think I must say, to the gain of 
a majority. Our fourth-semester students write 
better themes than they used to when they were 
overburdened with the set Literature require- 
ments. They treat their subjects in their own 
style and in the old days one was glad to get the 
merest common sense, let alone style. 

I do not want to give the idea that we are con- 
tentedly turning out a class of young barbarians 
who are indifferent to the great classics. We all 
know that we do turn out children thus indiffer- 
ent, but not barbarians, from all departments 
of our educational system. I try to keep some- 
where in sight a bit of china once presented to 
me by my original and beloved Delphine, whom 
I taught in a well-conducted college-preparatory 
school for girls. The giver of the bonboniere 
is now in France, doing great things for separated 
families. Delphine was most classically trained. 



Blessing Esau 35 

but her mind, already turning to practical things, 
led her to tell me, one day, just what she thot 
of a certain English classic. The bonboniere was 
a peace-offering which she afterwards felt that 
the occasion called for. "Now," I often tell my- 
self, "Delphine, one of our real American aris- 
tocracy, felt that way, and had the goodness and 
honesty to say so." Why wonder that busy, 
crowded George and Madeline, if required to 
read certain classics, sometimes used to invoke the 
suffering cats or other tribal deities? I am in- 
chned to think that to-day our two-year children 
have gained somewhat in appreciation for the real 
classics, because they now read what they choose 
to read among them. I notice that they stand and 
study the reading-list of the four-year students, 
and mine read things from this list. Dictation 
exercises introducing such things, stories of 
oburse, have proved popular. They read the 
English novelists with varying results as to en- 
joyment, but at least all such reading is volun- 
tary. "I read It carefuly and didn't think much 
of it," said my calm, orderly little cameo-girl, 
Gertrude. Her pretty, clear-cut face flushed a 
trifle as she went on: "Why do they call It such 
a great book?" The book was "Tale of Two 
Cities," The young reader had something to say 
for herself, as to why she had not "thot much 



36 Blessing Esau 

of it." But against her clearly defined opinion I 
must set another opinion, unuttered but expressed. 
This was Edward's opinion. Edward was at that 
time my Demonstration of Perpetual Motion. 
He loved the blackboard as Andrea loved "great 
walls to cover." I let him write there, during 
dictation, and he always presented a kinetic pic- 
ture of satisfaction. The class had wanted a dic- 
tation on "Two Cities," which several of them, 
including Edward, were reading. The anticipa- 
tion of the end of the story did not seem to spoil 
the interest for them. They had no doubt heard 
the main points from the regular second-term 
children who read the book in class. If Edward 
had heard, tho, his "hope was better," and, 
when I reached the last part of the review, he 
called out, with no preliminary raising of hand 
and snapping of fingers: "Did he die in his 
place?" And when I answered yes, Edward 
turned his face to the wall and wrote no more. 
To him the story was at least real. 

When we first thot of modifying our old 
course to the extent of separating the two-year 
students from the others, we had some natural 
scruples. It was hard to admit that two years 
would be the limit of the school-life of many of 
our children, for is not this America? Are not 
all things possible? All things are perhaps pos- 



Blessing Esau 37 

sible, but not expedient. We feared taking a step 
toward Prussianism, in recognizing, as it seemed, 
a class distinction. But was not that really a little 
shabby? Ben Johnson, I believe, describes the 
state of "being essentially mad without seeming 
so." I dare say that we were, in the old days, 
essentially snobbish without seeming so, when we 
forced everybody thru the same mold, on the 
supposition that there was but one way to give 
good training in English. We shall not be evolv- 
ing a class school and shutting the doors of higher 
schools upon short-time students so long as we 
give them real work which helps them. Undi- 
gested facts and theories never quite taken in en- 
gender habits of failure, and a habit of failure 
shuts the doors I mentioned, and other doors as 
well. Sometimes, when I cannot sleep, I think 
of my small C. and I always see her tear-stained 
face. She was a fourth-term failure under the 
old course; I believe she was straight in every- 
thing else and "a swell stenog," as her friends 
said, but she could not honestly be passed in the 
regular EngHsh course. This poor child had a 
blurred notion of names of a few persons or poets 
of the Romantic Age. Among friends she usually 
spoke of people as guys, and of good food as 
flossy eats. She began most sentences with "Lis- 
ten I" "Gosh" was in her vocabulary. Her 



38 Blessing Esau 

whole impression of the Sir Roger papers would 
be about this : "There was an old geeser who 
spent week-ends in the country with another one 
named Sir Roger who was nuts on a widow and 
afterwards died." C. was much discouraged over 
her failure tho she took her grade amiably; 
she did not come back to finish her deficiency 
and I hope this did not give her too much prece- 
dent for failing. Now, however, students of her 
mentality are, under the new course, getting good 
habits, reading what they can, and stopping with 
an appetite for more. 

As to the reading-list for Two-year Commer- 
cials, we must confess to more vocational books 
than of any other type. At the Providence Tech- 
nical High School, in the two-year course which 
lasts four years (the classes which alternate 
periods of study and work) the boys are said to 
divide their books into the two classes, "Voca- 
tional and Interesting." We sometimes, at a stu- 
dent's request, say grace over a book which we 
teachers should not classify under either of these 
heads, but we bless it because we see some good 
reason why a student may profit by reading it. 
This is not all, however; for in the course of the 
term, when something both entertaining and solid 
has been reviewed, one can show the points of 
superiority in the last, referring, not too unkindly, 



Blessing Esau 39 

to the literary faults of the weaker book. After 
such an occasion, lately, I was delighted to be told 
by one of my girls, "I'm glad that is really a good 
book. I liked it so well that I read it all aloud 
to a bhnd boy next door." One needs of course 
to remember constantly that the indebtedness of 
small writers to great ones is a thing to which it 
is useless to call children's attention. The stand- 
ardized material and characters of the best-seller 
are new and delightful to them as they once were 
to us. Stories of the H. B. Wright school, even,, 
do seem to touch my young Esaus with some 
"morals," sincere tho starkly crude in their 
development, and at least earnest and unmistak- 
able as to their intent. This forcing of morals I 
cannot do, and I have a sort of respect for those 
not too sicklied o'er with scruples of all kinds to 
do it. I know that the champagne and truffles 
which a man merely hears about are cold comfort, 
and he prefers beer and pretzels, on the table. 
My Esaus do not, however, choose a large 
amount of the beer-and-pretzel sort of reading. 
Winston Churchill may be occasionally prolix, but 
my two-year children love him just the same; for 
is he not also a St. Louisan, and aren't those 
houses in the "Crisis" right near our school? 
And isn't our school named for the original Mr. 
Brinsmade? Clearly, he is a person and not a 



40 Blessing Esau 

poet. As to the standard by which we measure 
the values in our short-time reading courses, I 
have only one more word to say; we teachers of 
English are perhaps, as a class, under the just im- 
putation of referring too many educational mat- 
ters to literary standards. We quote the disdain- 
ful saying about the silk purse and the hog's ear, 
always with the intimation that the purse is the 
higher type. This is where our biological col- 
leagues would set us right. Some teachers have 
a trifle the attitude of considering a two-year 
course in the light of something over which one 
must sigh and shrug the shoulders, because — ap- 
parently because — it is not something else than 
itself. Yet this course is a respectable problem 
in itself, with conditions excluding all theorizing 
and technicalities, but leaving plenty of room for 
honest work. When we have made it a useful 
course it will command the respect given any go- 
ing concern. 

The composition work in this course Is of all 
sorts tho the forms of letter-writing have to 
be mastered early in the game. Our first-termers 
are handled differently by different teachers, but 
I drill mine, at first, along lines already suggested 
as useful in a special first-class term. Of course 
children undiscouraged by failure, and fresh from 
drill in the grades, will eat up this work rapidly, 



Blessing Esau 41 

and soon be ready for a more difficult sort. They 
profit by the season of drill, however; and prac- 
tice in the principles of punctuation has always 
seemed to me more constructive than a review 
of rules, and tests on the children's misapplication 
thereof. 

An easy transition to composition work has 
been, in my classes, a regular discussion of current 
events. This has been mostly oral and has often 
been based on the good cartoons of the week. 
The children bring reams of these, so that it has 
frequently been possible to have a copy of a given 
picture for every two or three in the division. 
Much clear exposition has arisen from these pic- 
tures, and twice within a few weeks, in my most 
articulate division, a discussion grew Into a pre- 
pared debate, asked for as a favor and prepared 
for with anxious care. Especially in this division 
participation In these cartoon discussions was 
eager and emphatic. We soon had a minimum of 
parliamentary procedure ingrained, but I recall 
one afternoon, when my chairman did not get 
ideal cooperation (not because of Indifference, but 
because of what Lamb would call excess of par- 
ticipation) and when I thot best to call off 
the discussion. I took my dictation book, and 
began at random on a piece of exposition, which 
explained the working of a sim.ple planisphere. 



42 Blessing Esau 

The class was disappointed but wrote meekly 
away, and were soon interested and trying to 
make little diagrams. In a day or two members 
of a parallel division asked me, with a somewhat 
hurt expression, if "our class wasn't going to 
learn something about star-maps, too." This in- 
cident is one which I remember when I hear the 
opinion expressed that our short-time children are 
hard to interest. It seems a disciplinary incident 
to go along with "Eppie in de toal-hole." If 
these youngsters can only keep the faculty of be- 
ing interested! 

In this course I have always expected a certain 
amount of memory-work, and we have more than 
once turned this to account by giving short dra- 
matic programs. The voice-work is good for 
children who have their way to make, and If 
this sort of thing is done socially, so that all can 
get the practice, it seems a good and interesting 
way to manage a necssary thing. During the war 
the careful writing and learning of the playlets 
was motivated by the needs of our school Red 
Cross unit, and the socialization was so complete 
that I did not know until a day or two before 
the entertainment who my casts would be. 

Another easy step toward the freer composi- 
tion of the second year is simple reproduction, and 
later small themes on anything that may be sug- 



Blessing Esau 43 

gested by reading aloud. We have several short 
things on our reading-list which I give in this way: 
"Message to Garcia," "Man Without a Coun- 
try," "Perfect Tribute," "Adrift on a Polar Ice- 
Pan," and Muir's "Stickeen" all come under this 
head. I had a delightful experience with this 
last one, lately. It was in the gray days of the 
influenza epidemic, between two recesses due to it. 
I had begun the little story in my late-afternoon 
division, who came in, as often, tired and sleepy. 
They immediately showed the bracing quality of 
Alaskan atmosphere. Amused and affectionate 
expressions played over some of the faces, and I 
could tell off-hand which children would presently 
be comparing "my dog" with Stickeen. Then 
there was a jarring note. A message came up 
from the ofl^ce saying that, at the end of this 
period, school would again close indefinitely. 
When I proposed, however, to give all the rest 
of the hour to finishing "Stickeen," the air cleared 
at once. One by one the small ones edged up to 
the front and sat two in a seat. Our Tiny Tim 
sat on his desk at my right apparently reading 
along with me. The study-pupils gave up any 
work they had on hand and joined us, and the 
story came to its triumphant end. The atmos- 
phere of the class-room on this anxious afternoon 
reminded me of an almost forgotten experience 



44 Blessing Esau 

of reading to a class during a tornado, which dam- 
aged the building but not the spirit of the class. 
Reading done in this way has always, in my ex- 
perience, resulted in good theme-work, probably 
because the perfectly-shared emotional experience 
has been so real. 

A longer reading, a whole book, can be used 
in one of these classes, if the class is sufficiently 
anxious to meet conditions about the dispatch of 
routine work. I have several times used "Cap- 
tains Courageous" in a second-term class, and it 
has always been both popular and useful. Be- 
fore I finish speaking of "Captains Courageous," 
I want to digress and tell some discouraged 
teacher about B., who had apparently escaped 
learning any EngHsh in high-school. One day I 
was walking in great gloom along an ugly street 
of our town, when I passed a tall man in overalls. 
He was busy at a grocer's delivery-wagon, and I 
did not see his face; and besides, I was indulging 
my mind in such a fit of disillusion with my pro- 
fession, that I was for the moment not interested 
in folks, even grocers' assistants. Presently I 
heard my name called and saw a blue streak catch- 
ing up with me in a style that could belong only 
to B., our famous athlete of a term or two back; 
a boy remembered with reverence by all the ath- 



Blessing Esau 45 

letes in the school. All the great things that he 
had done in athletics seemed to have been sub- 
tracted, in some occult way, from his English, 
altho his attitude had been the best in the 
world. After due preliminaries, I learn that B. 
had taken out a library-card and was beginning 
to read in earnest. He asked for and took down 
the names of several books which he described on 
which he had heard other people report, "Put 
Yourself in His Place" was one, and he was espe- 
cially anxious to get hold of "Captains Courage- 
ous," which he described in some detail. "That 
was one good book," he said, and then obeying 
some kindly impulse, he added confidentially, 
"And you know that — that there piece you copied 
for me, that from Milton; I got that with my 
Confirmation things." This last sounds almost 
like a violation of confidence, but, you see, the 
B's are often starting upon their solitary reading- 
courses, helped by the wise librarians who are 
now taking our place as mentors; and they are 
often laying up as choice treasures things which 
we should choose to have them value. We cannot 
always know about it, though ; hence this anecdote. 
This little talk with B. sent me on my way re- 
adjusted; more than that, happy. I could fancy 
some of the feelings of the great teacher of child- 



46 Blessing Esau 

ish minds, when he found in the wilderness not a 
bitter spring but an oasis with wells and palm 
trees. 

When I first attacked our two-year commercial 
course, I wondered if it would be possible to feel 
or evoke enthusiasm about it. I rather feared 
that there was no more than a second-hand bless- 
ing for Esau. What I mean by the blessing is 
not just simple to explain. It has nothing to do 
with speed and accuracy, but much to do with 
the "internal revenues of the spirit" which Esau 
will need to be collecting in the future. It has 
to do with his ability to read, think and have fun 
with his mind. He may indeed get the blessing 
from some other source. I just read a letter writ- 
ten to the parents of a librarian who had lately 
died. The letter, from a young lad in another 
city, told the father and mother how their daugh- 
ter had helped him in this way by suggesting to 
him things to read. I knew this gracious woman 
well and know that she probably showed all the 
sympathy she could with the boy's own ideas of 
reading, and knew something about him as a per- 
son rather than a case. This gave her the influ- 
ence which lasted as long as she lived and which 
he feels still to be very real. I wonder if we, 
who have less literary tolerance than the libra- 
rians — if we are not perhaps a little proud of our 



Blessing Esau 47 

squeamlshness. "KIttie's pwoud of hisself," said 
a little friend of mine about her cat. "It's be- 
cause he's so delicut." We can cut off confidential 
talk about books once for all, with an adolescent, 
by a rash or sarcastic word about a beloved 
writer. We might think more of the squeamish- 
ness of our young Esaus. We can as easily cut 
off discussion about other things. Let it once be 
thot in class that the teacher has a strong po- 
litical hobby or hatred, and — as Dick Swiveller 
would say — "that street is closed up." And when 
personal knowledge is so hard to get, when we 
and our children have an estranging big city sys- 
tem to combat, how can we afford to close up 
good streets? 

After all, the short-time students are normal 
children, and we are only to introduce them to 
things which normal people always enjoy, or dis- 
like and take sides on, or at all events have 
thots about. It is a sad necessity that they 
must go into the world so soon. Still two years 
may not be too short a time to give them an in- 
troduction to the technique of finding out things, 
and to the happy faculty of enjoying them. 
Meantime our Esau must be met on his own 
ground. Only so can we guide him to higher 
ground and wider vision. 



THE PROGRAM AS PROJECT 

/^ NCE upon a time, far from your kitchen and 
^-^ mine, a young cook demurred at throwing 
away the batter into which the kitten had fallen, 
"because" (so she said) "all that kitty touched 
stuck to her." Is not this notion, inadmissible as 
to the kitchen, one of the chief corner-stones of 
the Project idea? Any means, however skillful, 
will enable but a limited quantity of any course 
thus to touch and stick. An interesting scheme, 
however, which calls in the aid of association, 
may often help the student to organize an other- 
wise — to him — incoherent course. The program 
based on a course in English has both strong and 
weak points as a project, but in my experience 
it has justified itself as a unifying influence. 

One high-school course which I fear I enjoy 
giving more than the children do taking, is whajt 
we call English Six. In this semester we read 
Burke and do our work in Argumentation. We 
also study metrical forms, and, since fourth-year 
English has become elective in some courses, we 
have been reading one Shakespeare play, lest the 

48 



The 1 rogram as Project 49 

students miss this important feature entirely. 
There is never any trouble about interest in the 
play. The debating, too, goes well, but it is hard 
for the classes to escape the usual tradition as to 
the unpleasantness of the Burke study. In con- 
sidering this course with a view to program mak- 
ing, I have never included the Shakespeare work, 
but it would form in itself an excellent unit of 
study from the stage point of view, not in the 
same quarter, say, with the late Eighteenth-cen- 
tury program. There is no such remoteness to 
the debating work and a short debate between 
two can be well introduced into such a program. 
The chief part of my English Six programs 
has usually been material contemporary with 
Burke. I once had a discussion worked up be- 
tween Johnson and Burke about the American 
tax-question, the Johnson side coming, of course, 
from "Taxation, No Tyranny." This debate was 
left off the program, the first one I ever gave in 
Sixth Term, because a school event involving sev- 
eral of my Sixes caused us to shorten our program 
time, but I think it would have been effective. 
The whole of the program follows, and each num- 
ber had a good measure of success with the 
audience. 

The visible part of this particular program had 
the same relation to the rest which the submerged 



50 Blessing Esau 

portion of an icberg has to the showy part. What 
only I fully appreciated about it was that it was 
class production made up by difficult but finally 
successful cooperation. I had at first called the 
division giving it my incommensurable incompati- 
bles, for the division suffered both from a lack 
of average students, and from a seemingly hostile 
spirit between some of the most noticeable mem- 
bers of the class. I suspect that there was some 
secret society or class politics feud, for "frats" 
and sororities were smouldering in the school at 
that time, unacknowledged but present. This 
spirit appeared in what I thought unduly acri- 
monious discussion following debates, but we had 
good chairmen, and they rose to these occasions. 
Still, I thot a long time before deciding what 
would unite, only sufficiently unite, this hetero- 
geneous class for the less contentious part of 
their course, and my final idea was our program. 
In the Burke reading I had felt more than usual 
that the weak ones were relying on others for 
their briefs, and this made me wish to take the 
class into some altogether new field. With this in 
mind I brought to class and issued for home read- 
ing such things as Boswell, "Taxation, No 
Tyranny," "Rasselas," Irving's "Life of Gold- 
smith," Sheridan and Goldsmith plays, Fanny 



The Program as Project 51 

Burney's stories, Macaulay's essay about her, 
and for easy reading "The Jessamy Bride," 
"Peg Woffington" (I think), Austin Dobson's 
Eighteenth Century Vignettes and short stories 
and sketches by Mr. Moore, especially Including 
"Georgian Pageant." We later had a little music, 
and some pretty colored copies of Sir Joshua Rey- 
nolds' portraits, and some Galnsboroughs, but 
didn't really do much with them at that time. 
(Piano and violin music and songs of this period 
are easy to get, and there are some good Victor 
records, which help out the beginning of the pro- 
gram.) The students browsed over this material 
about two weeks, keeping notebook records, and 
were to pick out good program material. We had 
many suggestions that we could not follow for 
lack of time, but finally had our project down to 
scale, using no picture material, and reducing the 
music to solos, because the class proved to be well 
supplied with voices. Our musical choices ha4 
great success and the well-known ballad, "Auld 
Robm Gray" was so dramatic in its climax that 
the^ accompanist sat down with tears in her eyes. 
This little triumph did much for the young singer, 
who had not loved her Burke's Conciliation. Our 
tenor,^ who sang "To all ye ladles now on 
land," would presumably have gone on Indefi- 



52 Blessing Esau 

nitely repeating this song and the "White Cock- 
ade" as encores, but for the inter-school track- 
meet, which followed the program. Our songs 
came from "Pan Pipes" (London, Novello and 
Co. Second edition. George Routledge and 
Sons.) The Walter Crane illustrations in this 
pretty book gave us easy suggestions for such 
additions to ordinary clothes as would give us an 
atmosphere. The program was given in a science 
lecture-room, with no stage, and with only such 
properties as a little pretty china, a home-spun 
antique table cover, a sampler framed as a tea- 
tray, and some easy effects as to knee-trousers, 
"Steenkirks," caps, hats, and fichus. The girls as- 
sembled for their "scandalous dialog" and sipped 
tea and dealt cards. The same setting served for 
the Teazel scenes, with the addition of some flow- 
ers for Lady Teazel, and we had no outdoor 
setting. The boys wanted at first to get old pis- 
tols for the duel, but we decided to incur no ex- 
pense, and the anachronism of what Jack Abso- 
lute calls cat-pistols seemed to arouse no criticism. 
The programs and invitations to the other Eng- 
lish Six divisions free at the time were typed by 
a student who was already off at training camp 
when the program was given; and thither our 
very hale and hearty Sir Peter presently followed. 



The Program as Project 53 

The song "All ye ladies now on land" had for 
us the special interest that one of our "incompati- 
bles" who had gone with an ambulance unit, had 
just been heard from that day, and we rejoiced 
that his ship had not been lost by "Dutchmen 
or by Wind." 

I had wanted a setting for this program, but 
the class did not have any inspirations. In this 
respect I was somewhat disappointed In the pro- 
gram as a cement for the separate features of 
the term's work. As a socializing effort, how- 
ever, it was a success. Fellow-students and mem- 
bers of the class families were there, a small but 
cordially appreciative group, and the smallness 
of the hall made everything intimate and friendly. 
All the wit found instant response ; present mirth 
had present laughter; I had had one or two cold 
moments about the songs, particularly the quaver- 
ing old tune, "Contented wi' little an' cantie wi' 
main" Its cadences had been so unexpected to 
the really musical girl who sang it, that she had 
had to sing them to me more than once, over the 
telephone, to see if she were practicing them cor- 
rectly. She did them In a way that the author 
would surely have enjoyed, and she fairly crowed 
over "My luve she's but a lassie yet." This was 
the program: 



54 Blessing Esau 

Songs: "All ye ladles" and "White Cockade." 
Scenes from Sheridan: 
("Scandal") 

1. Mrs. Candor, Lady Sneerwell and Maria 
sit down to cards. 

2. Sir Peter Teazel objects to his wife's flor- 
ist's bill. 

("Rivals") 

3. Bob Acres, influenced by Sir Lucius O'Trig- 
ger, sends a challenge. 

4. The Ladies interested in the duellers hear 
the news. 

5. Jack Absolute's father. Sir Anthony, hears 
of it, and puts a stop to such doings. 

Scotch Songs: 

"Contented wi' Little" (Burns). "Auld Robin 
Gray" (Lady Lindsay). 
Reading: 

Garrick's Leading Lady Plays a Joke. 
Scotch Songs: 

"But a Lassie Yet" (Burns). "Loch Lo- 
mond." 

My beloved Incommensurables did, during this 
task, find a common factor, and seemed to get the 
good of each other's strong points. There was 
a relaxation of the feeling of tension which had 
worried me earlier in the year, and the course 
closed with something new in my experience. So- 



The Program as Project 55 

cialized recitations were new in the school, and 
there was then no precedent for last recitations, 
as there may be now, so I was pleasurably dis- 
concerted when the class passed what seemed a 
really hearty vote of thanks to the teacher for 
the interest and profit of the course. Even the 
next year, when I had gone to another school, I 
had an echo of the last era of good feeling in my 
19 1 6 English Six. I was taking a walk on the 
edge of town, thinking of anything rather than 
Burke and his friends, when a dashing motorcycle 
passed, reconsidered, and came back. It was J., 
one of my last term's Sixes. He had barely re- 
ported the Forum and Congress Literary Socie- 
ties, when he broke out excitedly, "Say! Didn't 
M., in our English Six, volunteer last April, and 
shouldn't he be on the service flag?" He had and 
he ought, and the motorcycle boy vowed that he 
would see to it, seeming to feel indignant at a 
want of consideration to his one-time rival, not to 
say enemy. Later, seeing me on the street car, 
he came and told me all about the illness which 
•feiad occasioned M.'s honorable discharge. I con- 
fess to being as glad J. cared as I was s.oTry M. 
had been ill. Tho the change toward cooper- 
ation came from forces within the class, I thot 
of the whole thing as one more proof that when 
people work well together they will come to un- 



S6 Blessing Esau 

derstand and value each other, and thus democra- 
cies will stand. A big conclusion from small data. 
. . . Personally I felt like Caesar on a summer 
evening in his tent, the day he overcame the 
Nervii. 

In a very different class of the same grade, I 
once had similar programs worked up with a set- 
ting. The scene was at Sir Joshua Reynolds', 
and several of his youthful models figured among 
the literary and musical people. This class con- 
tained a good "Miss Bowles" and "Penelope 
Boothby," and a miraculous "Strawberry Girl." 

A quaint Fourteenth Century program was 
given by an English Seven division of mine; that 
is, a division taking the first half of the Survey of 
English literary history. The scene was of course 
the Tabard Inn, tho a sameness pervaded the 
showy silverware of that famous hostel; for the 
plate did in fact consist entirely of different styles 
of Soldan trophy cups, and the big Yale Bowl for 
which the schools here compete. There was a 
general scheme, white, blue and silver, which 
lighted vin prettily. Lady Eglantine's extremely 
small L/ouncf was white, too, and he, with two bor- 
rowed small children gave a less school-like ef- 
fect to the stage. The curtain rose on a group 
of thirty singing, "Summer is icumen in," as a 
three-part round with two violins and a "lute." 



The Program as Project 57 

The last feature, the Shepherds' Play, with a 
Teddy-bear sheep was bereft of one of its comic 
motifs, but it was plenty funny enough. For the 
last feature before the curtain went down, the 
class sang the religious words to the song with 
which they had begun. A serious and good piano 
accompaniment had been discovered by one of the 
girls in the preceding number of the "Etude," and 
we used this. While the Tabard Inn group were 
clearing up and making ready for their next reci- 
tation, a former student of much musical promise 
sang us "Love me little, love me long" and 
"Come hither, love, to me." The miracle-play 
seems to have been the most popular feature of 
this program, but the general air of energetic 
participation was also much noticed by the older 
members of the audience. 

When I think of program projects that I have 
used among younger students, I always remem- 
ber my "Two Cities" group, and the experience 
which started them off. Some years ago, I had 
in a small school a first-term class of forty, con- 
taining about twelve boys whom the Scripture 
would describe as having a dumb devil. They 
were not stupid, but were at the awkward age, 
and, I think, all had more or less disrespectful 
nicknames; Fat and Red were among them, and 
the slowest one of the number went under the 



58 Blessing Esau 

name of Dynamite. I conceived the Idea of liber- 
ating the pent-up forces of this group by giving 
them something particularly noisy to doi at a 
literary-society meeting. I did not like to think 
of the task, for (damaging tho the admission 
be) my voice had given out that year, and I was 
to avoid coaching. As it turned, tho, this was 
a new kind of coaching. They took the idea with 
some enthusiasm; I mean only the Idea of giving 
something In public, not my missionary purpose. 
We chose two scenes from Treasure Island, dra- 
matized in Simonds' and Orr's collection. I still 
find unfailingly amusing my recollections of our 
practice time. The pirates would as they said, 
whack thru the scene, and then vault off the 
stage and swarm back t: :ny perch in the rear, 
firing out questions like machine guns: "How'd 
she go that time?" "Could you hear Red?" 
"D'l go like a parrot?" "Have we gotta smoke 
coffee?" "Sure, Jen. She told you the school 
board wouldn't stand for reg'lar smokes." "Dy- 
namite got In front of Fat this trip." And so It 
went. The strain on my voice was slight. An- 
other memory Is connected with the camp fire. I 
had gone out to dinner, one snowy evening, and 
was called to the door by my quiet wireless en- 
thusiast. He had been struck with an idea about 
the camp fire, and had sought me up hill and 



The Program as Project 59 

down dale to communicate it. My hostess was 
touched by the stocky little figure and earnest face, 
and invited the child in to the fireplace, where 
some Filipino curios hung. The incident ended 
by mine host's offering us the use of these; not 
because they were particularly correct, but because 
they looked strange and foreign. Our camp fire 
was unique. It was to flicker of course, but no 
prosaic alternating current for us I There was a 
wired board with many bulbs, all of whose wires 
were interrupted by hooks and staples. From 
each hook two strings lay along the floor, one 
passing through the staple, to the hand of a re- 
clining buccaneer; the red one opened, the white 
one closed a main. With these strings each fire 
guardian wiggled his light and forgot his em- 
barrassment. When the scene ended with the 
roaring chorus of "Fifteen men on a dead man's 
chest," I was sure that the dumb devils were gone 
out. Later my pirates were humbly delighted to 
have their scene chosen by the principal as a fea- 
ture of a benefit entertainment. 

The other experience, a term later, brot in 
the whole class to which the Treasure Island 
group belonged, and they were all prominent in 
it. This class was reading "Two Cities," and 
conceived the (to me) distressing idea of drama- 
tizing it, and giving a performance for two ob- 



6o Blessing Esau 

jects : half to go to the grade penny lunches, and 
half to pay class expenses thru the rest of 
their four years' course. Each of these ideas 
seemed to me crazier than the other, but each 
was realized; with my at length hearty coopera- 
tion, they made a reasonably well-selected set of 
scenes, and they made enough money to pay a 
coach from outside, contribute generously to the 
penny lunches and a Thanksgiving offering for thq 
city poor, and furthermore, they put into the bank 
the sum which they afterwards, as juniors, used 
for their supper for the seniors. 

Every one took part in some way, the Carmag- 
nole and the songs between the acts giving scope 
for some who did not finally "make" a speaking 
part. One of our principal characters moved 
away just before the time set for the performance, 
but "our play" was so well socialized that there 
was no trouble in filling his place. One small — 
perhaps not so small — break occurred in the per- 
formance before the students, and none in the 
evening play. The afternoon slip was simply that 
Madam Defarge's demise took place a second or 
two before its cause; the amiable gunman in the 
wings was so interested in the struggle that he 
forgot to fire his cartridge. 

I had to leave this class at the end of the semes- 
ter containing "Our Play" and saw the class only 



The Program as Project 6i 

during occasional visits. I am informed that the 
time spent on this enterprise and the fact that 
their own ideas went into it, reacted favorably on 
the class. They missed certain composition work 
which I had expected to give them, but the manu- 
scripts of the dramatization were good, and in 
some cases the first really good, neat work done 
by the writers during their high-school course. 
Perhaps we are all liable to a Pardiggly trait 
of attributing things we make children do to the 
free will of the young victims. Our Edmund con- 
tributes his whole allowance to the Fiji Mission, 
our Robert loves to write these themes which we 
exact from him, our Emily reads eighteenth cen- 
tury things in cold blood, and so following. I 
sometimes undergo a slight shock when I over- 
hear a frank remark about some ancient, illustri- 
ous person whom I had thot the speaker 
rather liked. But these program projects have 
been, as who should say, automobile things; once 
cranked up they have gone along like the modest 
little Ford. They may not have amounted to 
much from an aesthetic point of view, but there 
was no doubt about their motive power. At this 
distance, I am thankful for my incapacity of voice 
which — at the time of the dramatization last de- 
scribed — did prove to me that in this idea I am 
not a Mrs. Pardiggle, but that "my little family" 



62 Blessing Esau 

did these things themselves, and swept me along. 
This fact, so far as it goes, speaks well of the 
program as a project. 

The spontaneous character which such enter- 
prises tend to take on has often some unexpected 
and good by-product. (It may also have some 
troublesome by-products, as any teacher will 
testify who does not like to be disturbed outside 
hours.) I was surprised at one such unexpected 
result, after my last program, but now it seems as 
natural as daylight. My discovery is that pro- 
grams may help cases of stammering. I had a 
stammering, intelligent boy in a class giving this 
program, and did not consider giving him a part;' 
that was not the way it worked. His part was 
unexpected but it has helped him, I am sure, for 
I now have him again in a class in argumentation, 
and he has gained much in confidence. His part 
was simply an unexpected emergency call to be 
stage electrician. The wiring was to have been 
done the night before the performance, but by an 
accident it was not, and we found the stage blank 
and bare when we came that morning. There- 
upon arose my stammering boy and several other 
of the noblest Romans of them all, and filled the 
gap. Like Joshua the son of Nun, they "Never 
did stop till the work was done," tho they must 
have been hungry, not to say tired, before the bell 



The Program as Project 63 

rang for the program to begin. The stop-gap 
recitation which I had coached hastily, to fill a 
possible delay, was not required, for N. and his 
colleagues and younger assistants were ready on 
the moment. Never had such calm and connected 
discourse fallen from N's lips as when he gave 
orders to the small helpers, and when he explained 
some intricacies to his teacher, whose electrical 
knowledge is yet in an early Elizabethan stage. 
This anecdote is offered to teachers specializing in 
nervous cases. Perhaps the experimental appara- 
tus is awkward, like burning down the house to 
roast the pig, but improvements may be made in 
the apparatus. And, anyway, N. doesn't stutter 
much in his English class now; he Is an excellent 
chairman, and he has debated successfully. 

I grant that the play is not the thing for all 
purposes. But there are unifying properties 
about almost any program, even one arranged 
wholly by the teacher, like a recent benefit my 
classes gave for a rehabilitation fund. This I 
arranged myself with a view to effectiveness 
rather than literary values. The part of my first 
year commercial children in this program was, 
to give what they called their Cosette and Gav- 
roche "plays"; little scenes which merited no such 
title. These scenes stirred them greatly, both be- 
fore and since the program; In fact even noW| 



64 Blessing Esau 

when the classes have broken up and scattered to 
other teachers. "I saw them Gavroche and Co- 
sette pictures last night," says one former student, 
going on to mention some of the Jean Valjean in- 
cidents, but seeming to feel that they were but 
incidental. "Was it true?" asked a little girl from 
this group. "Did Eponine and Azelma grow up 
to be thieves?" And when I told her about Epo- 
nine's death (the audience had grown) I remem- 
ber our small, frisky Eponine and Azelma, at first 
subdued and then cheering up quickly, when Zelma 
said: "There, you see, dear, you are a dead one 
after all." More than a term has now passed, 
and yet, when we foregather, Gavroche forgets 
to be shy, and gives us the dazzling smile with 
which whilom he flouted Public Order, and en- 
tertained his guests at the Elephant. And the 
girls will recall how our cautious cat disliked the 
looks of the descending curtain, escaped from 
Eponine and all but vaulted off into the orches- 
tra. ("Oh, my God! The catl" I heard, in a 
whispered shriek, from the wings.) But happily 
the curtain descended in time. Sometimes stu- 
dents of an older date have their reminiscences 
about the shrewd days and evenings which we 
have passed thru, as comates in a dramatic 
venture; such times as the dress-rehearsal when 
the heavy window-sash broke, fell and made "sad 



The Program as Project 6$ 

characteries" upon the brows of three leading peo- 
ple, and when the noble martyrs ran blithely over 
to the clinic across the street, were patched and 
embroidered, and came back that night to go 
thru with their parts. Any coach will have 
dozens of such recollections, and will have noticed 
the social effect of these experiences. 

One must not claim too much for any sort of 
project, but a program is not only a string to tie 
the course together, but more than that; it is a 
bond between the class and the teacher, a bond 
that is not soon broken. 



SPECIAL SIX 

Smoking flax shall he not quench 

\X7HY do about one-third of the students 
* prepared in our various secondary schools 
fail in your freshman Composition courses? 
What shall they do to be saved? Where do you 
think we could malie remedial changes?" These 
perplexing questions were recently put by an old 
girl to teachers of English in a leading Eastern 
college. The first question was seemingly easy 
to answer, but not so the others. In the opinion 
of most of the instructors interviewed, the main 
trouble with the failing freshmen is a lack of 
clearness in style and a consequent — or perhaps 
a contributory — failure to organize material. 
Some realized that this lack is only another name 
for muddled thinking, a deep-seated and wide- 
spread complaint. Is it not like the spider who 
putteth forth her hands and is in kings' palaces? 
Do we not sometimes catch ourselves in a non- 
sequitur? Do not even greater authorities, if 
such there be But I am going too far. All 

66 



Special Six ' 67 

I meant to say is that I wonder if there are 
enough honest men to hang the rogues. 

Asking questions and jeering at the answers 
would be a poor way to get anywhere in dealing 
with this question. The college teachers are as 
much interested in it as we in the high-schools, and 
we ought doubtless to exchange experiences, espe- 
cially successful ones. Our school has had some 
success in dealing with this problem, as it has 
come up in our bailiwick. Our Special Six is — 
so far as our city is concerned — an institution pe- 
culiar to Yeatman High-school, and not yet five 
years old. The teachers who planned it, into 
whose labors I am entering this year, do not im- 
agine that the idea is yet fully worked out. We 
admit the justice of the criticism that our students, 
even those who go to college, are too often 
muddle-headed. If we thought that this released 
us from responsibility we should be like a physi- 
cian who should say: "The trouble with you, 
Sir, is that you are sick." Or like a preacher who 
says: "This state of things Is all due to Adam's 
original Sin." Accepting responsibility as to this 
weakness, or this perversity, does not mean ac- 
cepting all the responsibility. I submit that reme- 
dies must be applied thruout the course. We 
must not think that the children may be mad 
north northwest and know a hawk from a hand- 



68 Blessing Esau 

saw in all other circumstances. Mathematics, Sci- 
ence, History must all do their part to keep the 
young minds from running too wild; but after all 
we must do our part. And we at our school are 
trying to devise all the means we can to make our 
Special Six help our seniors weak in expression. 
They are not unworthy of the best we can do for 
them. Many of them can think clearly when we 
let them alone and don't mix them up; and others 
can be taught a small and humble approach to the 
technique of thinking. 

During my questioning pilgrimage, last sum- 
mer, I spent a day visiting a technical high-school 
and talking with the head of the department of 
English. He shed light on one phase of it. The 
point which he made has little directly to do with 
a special course in English for seniors. The con- 
nection is indirect, but so real that I have thot 
of it again and again during the past year while 
giving Special Six for the first time. Mr. M. 
said he was sure that the failure of our students 
after they leave us often comes from mistrust of 
good success. "We love these children and un- 
derstand them," he said, "and when they go from 
us to a place where little attention can be paid 
to them, they grow discouraged, and think their 
instructors are hard on them." "And what do 
you do about this?" I asked hopefully. He said 



\ Special Six ' 69 

that this school corresponded with pupils who 
were failing in English, had interviews with them 
when that was practicable, and often found it 
possible to help them to a better orientation. The 
part of this which I have remembered often is 
the theory that lack of confidence is often the 
chief difficulty with the student who seems awk- 
ward in expression. Thinking of this, I have 
noted more than usual the behavior of our young 
Marlowes. Their awkwardness is the outward 
and visible sign of an inward perturbation; a feel- 
ing that whatever they write is going to be the 
wrong thing. If they look as if they want to es- 
cape from the class-room, as if they were praying 
for the bell to ring — that is just because they 
really are thinking these inglorious thots; and 
if they continue to feel this way it is going to be 
our fault, for we must see that the orientation 
is better. If I can do that I shall be helping some 
of them thru the freshman English next year, 
and doing no less service to the larger number 
who will finish their school life this year. 

Our problem would be simple if we had only 
the Young Marlowe, college-freshman type to 
think of, for he gets another chance to correct 
his errors and strengthen his weak points. We lose 
a deal of credit because he fails, but the incurring 
of criticism is a small and personal matter to a 



70 Blessing Esau 

teacher in comparison with some other things. 
Besides him we have at least two other types of 
students, children not destined to go farther than 
high school, and much in need of help. I shall 
not include the foreign-born student here because 
he is in a class by himself, is often not at all weak 
in language-powers, but merely inexperienced in 
English and learning rapidly. My two classes of 
really problematic students are those who nat- 
urally go too slowly for cooperation with others, 
and those who go too fast to get anything really 
thoroly done. The first find it almost impos- 
sible to stand examinations or any other test, in- 
cluding a certain amount of speed. The others 
stand as badly in a test of any sort for the oppo- 
site reason: they write a great deal but in Gra- 
tiano's proportion of wheat to chaff. With both 
of these I confess to finding it difficult on occa- 
sions not to Boss, but to remember always to 
Teach. Whenever I do for a moment forget and 
act like a section-boss instead of a farmer, I find 
that I have wasted instead of saving time. 

To take up first the slow and phlegmatic stu- 
dent; I believe we are every year surprised with 
the development of several of this type. They 
are not illiterate. They are often eflScient enough 
in lines which students prize and teachers under- 
value. I remember the glee with which one of 



special Six 71 

these, just returned from tank service, told me 
that another former teacher would be the next 
person he went to see: "You can just bet I'm go- 
ing to see Miss S. with my uniform on" (it had 
certain insignia besides the shoulder-straps), "for 
she probably still thinks I'm a nut." These really 
rather solid students would be hopelessly de- 
pressed by being put Into Special Six had not a 
few excellent students each term elected the 
course, without credit, for the sake of getting 
more work in composition than the required 
courses offer. This fact makes the atmosphere 
of the class less heavy than it would otherwise 
be. The "slow-and-steadys" begin everything on 
too large a scale, at first, and seldom finish any- 
thing. This can be shown to be a constitutional 
matter, not a piece of thrifty student-manage- 
ment; dwelling on what they know so as to have 
no time for the things they do not know. Occa- 
sionally the reason for the extreme deliberation of 
such a student is a truly creditable one, compara- 
ble to Sentimental Tommie's reason for being late 
with his theme. However, it is a "great and 
terrible world"; it is more terrible here, perhaps, 
than in the country of Kim's Lama. The one 
who cannot hurry on occasion will lose much that 
is desirable; and tho I think more and more 
that the type I am describing Is a fine type of 



72 Blessing Esau 

youth, I do devise certain sorts of work to be 
done against time, and I take the liberty of dis- 
cussing the scale on which a certain task can be 
done in a given time. The students respond to 
this, and get a certain amount of speed; but here 
I have to be almost painfully careful to keep out 
of sight and not nag. I know all the time that my 
deliberate Special is looking up to some talka- 
tive, confident chum who never has specific trouble 
with his English, but who "has no thots of 
any kind" as the little Rebecca Rowena said. We 
lately had a very typical case of the sort I am 
trying to describe. He was highly valued by the 
student body for his abihty in several branches 
of athletics. He was thotful and reliable on 
the field, rather than showy, and he suffered from 
a plentiful lack of glibness and conceit in his 
classes. This was a handicap to him in another 
line besides English, but he took Special Six extra, 
learned a little speed, and finished his course with 
his class after all. "I was very up-and-down with 
Mr. So-and-So," said in times past his teacher in 
the other branch in which he never volunteered. 
"I told him he was surely going to fail if he 
didn't pick up." "How did he take it?" I asked 
with great interest. "Why," said my colleague, 
blushing comprehensively and becomingly. 
"Well, the fact is he really acted as if he was 



: Special Six ' 73 

going to cry. He did really. It was very embar- 
rassing to me. I wish they wouldn't do so." 
Well, so do we teachers of Special Six. We real- 
ize, for it is our business to, that it is rather easy 
to reduce adolescents to tears, but to thaw them 
out to a just sufficient degree of coherent glibness 
— hie labor, hoc opus est! Our embarrassing boy 
learned to stand and deliver, however, and he 
wrote an excellently planned final paper and, in 
short, is now one of the least of all our em- 
barrassments. 

Before going on to the harder problem of the 
inconsequent student, let me stop and perhaps 
pound on the pulpit cushions for a moment. I 
do want to ask the young teacher, to lay it upon 
her Conscience, to conjure her not to beat too fast 
a time for the large slow natures which she has to 
deal with. Think how tired, how unnecessarily 
tired it makes you to have to take the pace of 
some one else. Getting to the destination is im-j 
portant, but may not some latitude be allowed 
as to the pace? Regarding what our accurate, de- 
liberate friends out in the world accomplish, none 
of us who move quickly would presume to hurry 
them up. They have whipped themselves into 
an appreciation of railroad and dinner engage- 
ments, no doubt, and beyond a few things like 
these, why is our rate of speed better than theirs? 



74 Blessing Esau 

Sometimes (I fear I am cracking the wind of my 
phrase), but sometimes these slow, large, trust- 
worthy natures seem to me, compared with the 
volatile type (that stands so well the speed of our 
schools) like a grandfather-clock standing in a 
corner and smiling down upon a Seth Thomas 
alarm clock; a harmless, necessary but not noble- 
looking thing. It wouldn't be an Improvement 
to put an alarm into a grandfather clock, would it? 
Our erhbarrassing boy Is not so bad. Our 
really inconsequent child is another matter. He- 
she will be saying in a few years: "I vote for 
Snooks because he's an old friend . . . because 
So-and-So gave him a raw deal and I feel sorry 
for him . . . because he's Phi Chi Psi . . . be- 
cause my father was a Republican . . . because 
he has such a sweet little wife." That is the fu- 
ture which I dread for a former pupil of mine 
who was arguing a question then under discussion 
in St. Louis; that of segregating the Negro citi- 
zens into certain blocks. This child gave as a 
reason for segregation: "The bone of their noses 
are shaped different to what ours Is." Youngsters 
capable of these nose-bone arguments are our real 
problems, and we do not straighten them out so 
much as I wish we might. Some of these loose 
thinkers would test out as high grade morons, 
hypermorons, just as some teachers and bank 



special Six 75 

presidents would. (I have this fact about bank 
presidents, scandalous as it sounds, from high au- 
thority.) However encouraging this mention of 
high society may sound, I hate to see my children 
travel that road tho in such good company. 
It is an indictment of our schools if children can 
scramble thru them with so little common 
sense. Our Special-Six results often show im- 
provement in this type of children, and we hope 
that the change means a growth in methodical 
thinking. 

One shade, or perhaps several shades better 
than the nose-bone arguers are the hare-brained, 
"fast-and-faulty" pupils whom we find in the net 
of our Sixth-term efficiency tests. For it is by a 
test, taken at the end of the third year, that we 
sift out our Specials. These skittish minds also 
suffer from being some way in the wrong tempo 
to go with the majority. Here, however, I have 
little scruple about interfering and setting a 
slower pace ; because, much as the student may 
dislike the change, he soon sees that he gets better 
results if he goes more slowly and he sometimes 
even sees that he didn't get results at all in the 
old way. In my present class there are several 
students of this sort. One day I was about to 
send off some Shakespearean songs and had them 
out when this class came in, stopping to chat on 



76 Blessing Esau 

the way to their seats. A girl and boy, both 
musical, looked at the songs with unconcealed dis- 
favor. I mean that they really looked at them, 
noting the time and probably getting a fair idea 
of the tunes, for they both are good accompanists. 
"Anyway," said the girl, with apparent friendly 
intention, "this one, 'O Mistress Mine,' would 
jazz real well." Her remark and the boy's evi- 
dent concurrence strangely discouraged me. The 
songs were nothing so much. It was just the spirit 
of the remark, and the fact that these children of 
ours can tolerate (no, not tolerate, but really 
like) those later war songs that make Tipperary 
sound as dignified as Bach. I went home that 
night thinking: "That would jazz real well," and 
fearing that I was failing. This was not rational 
thot, but a symptom of oncoming illness dur- 
ing which I was pursued by one of my little jazz- 
girl's songs about Mr. Zip-Zip-Zip, and another 
about Kissing Angels or Chasing Rainbows or 
something. When the fever was over, and I was 
rid of the jostling, toe-stubbing rhythms, I fancied 
I had got hold of one end of an idea about J's 
jazz-rhythms. Were my ideas to her like hers to 
me? The poor child! Now I would fain shake 
hands with her, instead of shaking her as formerly 
I should have been content to do. Yes, it is right 
to hold back these young fidgets, and make them 



special Six 77 

give the why and wherefore, and call for second 
and third versions of merely careless work. But 
how it must go against them I "Kansas is full of 
criminals," one will say. "The returning soldiers 
to a man do thus-and-so," ventures another. All 
this is the sort of thing that jazzes real well, 
and what a cross to put it into the teacher's slow 
and methodical tempo! I feel for the young 
mind, full of alarums and impetuous excursions, 
but it must learn to march slowly enough for 
safety. 

The exact material given in English Six Special 
differs with different classes and teachers. My 
class this term has shown some general likenesses 
to my specials described earlier, tho there are 
exception to every generalization I might draw. 
Pure carelessness, or pure wilfulness, has landed 
several able pupils in this class, and their cases 
need no discussion. They help out in starting new 
branches of work, usually do things cheerfully, 
and leaven the class a great deal, but of course 
they are not getting much except the discipline of 
doing a few things which they have so far es- 
caped doing. So far as I know I have only two 
students, girls, who elected the course. Our gen- 
eral lines of work have been: reading aloud, tak- 
ing a small amount of dictation, clipping articles 
and handing them in with outlines, making out- 



78 , Blessing Esau 

lines from matter read aloud (this has been espe- 
cially emphasized), condensing descriptions and 
explanations, giving oral topics, debating, and 
writing themes one or two days after making 
outlines for them. The themes are almost all on 
current topics, and a good number of the students 
take the Literary Digest for class purposes. For 
Literature work we read every one for himself 
about fifty pages a week, and the choice is very 
wide. One student had Dumas and either Emer- 
son or Pope in hand at the same time. In an- 
other class I understand choices varied from 
Dante to Mary Antin. 

There has been in my class only one piece of 
reading for every one; we did a short study of 
"Twelfth Night" for reading aloud purposes. 
Here, as in my class of younger specials, the 
parts done emphatically in class were remembered, 
and those prepared otherwise seem to have left 
but faint impressions. A girl from another divi- 
sion left her luncheon once to run over to my 
table and say: "Do you know, that remark of 
Maria's about throwing things at Malvolio seems 
to me funnier and funnier. Here I was going 
home with a girl who hadn't read the play, and 
she said just the same thing about a — you know, 
a kind of a goody boy. I guess," she said sweetly, 
"it's because we know we couldn't hit 'em that 



special Six ( 79 

we feel so." Two girls from the special class 
were with the enthusiast, and I asked one: "Do 
you remember that remark?" She confessed that 
she didn't. It happened that we had not read that 
scene in class. The reading aloud has improved, 
and some students have shown excellent judgment 
in the articles which they have brot. The 
choice has ranged from articles in Life and Judge, 
and things of the Dere Mahle stamp, thru 
various short Atlantic articles, to serious editorials 
which could be head-lined and afterwards tabu- 
lated. 

The work in tabulating, to which the History 
courses taken by most were a great help, has 
hardly been popular, but the purpose has been 
understood and visible progress has resulted, even 
in the case of the least methodical minds. The 
latter began, in some cases, by bringing clippings 
that defied outlining; some were from the Letters- 
From-The-People departments of newspapers, 
and were confused, full of repetitions, and gen- 
erally impossible. Ripping those to pieces on the 
blackboard was an impersonal and prophylactic 
proceeding which helped this part of our work. 

The special topics and yet more the debates 
were at first a heavy cross to my Special Sixes. 
The first topic of the season was given by a lad 
who had previously not cared to drink when he 



8o Blessing Esau 

was "led to water." Perhaps, tho, great shy- 
ness had brot him into my flock, and he may 
have been blameless. On this occasion he rose 
slowly, looked confidently at his audience, heard 
a giggle from his chum, and sat down precipi- 
tately. I didn't help him a bit, tho my inten- 
tions were good. In fact, I said interferingly: 
"You can give this to-morrow if you'd rather." 
But S. was already slowly rising, with visible pulse 
in his neck, and the veins on his forehead show- 
ing. "I won't do it to-morrow; I'll do it to-day," 
he answered unemphatically, but almost devoutly. 
He did it with complete success, and after this 
other people were less timid. 

Not only were the debates difficult, but even 
presiding at them was at first an ordeal. I almost 
had to conduct the first one myself. At the close 
of the period, on the day before this first debate, 
I asked a responsible, obliging youngster: "Would 
you be willing to preside for us to-morrow?" 
"No, Ma'am," answered W. politely but finally, 
and left me gasping. I had a sudden sense of be- 
ing Pardiggly. I had perchance expected too 
much voluntary activity on the part of my little 
family. But it wasn't so bad. L., of the Choral 
Club, hastened back and volunteered to preside, 
and next day conducted the voting for the future 
chairmen and women, and must have seen to it 



Special Six ' 8i 

that W. was elected for the next week. W. him- 
self lingered in evident distress to say: "I thot 
yesterday I couldn't do that." He did it well 
enough, with a gentler technique than a future 
chairman; this one, during a debate by four girls, 
quelled a slight noise on the boy's side with a 
wrathful "Shut up !" "I know we're just feeling 
our way," said one of the girls after this debate, 
"and I suppose you'll remember our trading- 
stamp debate; but I want to learn how to do just 
this." (She hopes to be a Domestic Science 
teacher, and must lecture, methodically and 
clearly.) 

Before the disbanding of this class, I am hope- 
ful of seeing and hearing some of them on the 
school stage. So far they have begun each new 
thing with misgivings and then found it possible. 
Perhaps this, too, will be possible. They are not 
like another division I have, containing the girl 
who doubts her ability to hit even goody boys. 
This girl and her colleagues are always "explod- 
ing" into some new activity, always in a state of 
spontaneous combustion. My specials, many of 
them no less likely to be successful in the big 
world, are, in this matter of expression, more like 
a smouldering or smoking flame. I am not sure 
that my class is going to kindle this up from the 
inside, but I sometimes have my hopes that I am 



82 Blessing Esau 

giving the fire a draft, and that it may burn up 
more brightly. 

Later. At the time of writing this, I can re- 
port that the flax has burned up with sufficient 
clearness to light us all through the examination 
set by the department. We have all "passed" 
and have had a happy day over it. All day, at 
intervals, the students have been coming back for 
the proof-read papers, and really looking them 
over, not merely asking for their grades. The 
"Do-it-to-day boy" took his to the teacher under 
whom he failed, and she was as pleased as he was. 
My eccentric J., in whom I have often wanted to 
make slight alterations of tempo (a work which I 
am now so glad that I have let alone) heartened 
me up by his contribution to the students' remarks 
about the course. They all, by the way, if they 
say anything at all about it, confess that they 
needed it, and benefited by the drill. But J. said: 
"This was the class of the whole day. I liked it. 
I looked forward to it. You can talk your own 
way here." There is perhaps something a little 
dubious about the sound of this remark, but I 
know J., and understand what he meant. He 
must, in the long run, go ahead in his own way. 
He must overcome any tendency to bad grammar, 
because he will blur his meaning if he under- 
takes to express it ungrammatically. He knows 



special Six 83 

that. And all that he takes from a printed book, 
and all that we forcibly feed him, may desert 
him at need, because it is too remote from "his 
way," J. is trying to improve his way, but hold- 
ing tightly to it, because he needs it; it is inalien- 
able. His teacher wishes nothing better than to 
help John, to help all of the Young Marlowes, to 
talk well, "in their own way." 



LAST WORD 

GOOD wine needs no bush, and a good play 
no epilog. Yet to good wine they do use 
good bushes, it is said, and to a report which (like 
its subject, the school-child) is never finished, per- 
haps a woman may be allowed a last word. One 
can as well keep the child clad, shod and fed up 
to date as to keep a report of him up to the min- 
ute. We can't mount him on a pin and mark 
once for all his genus and species, for, thank 
Heaven, he is still alive and growing and what's 
to come is still unsure. Our most earnest attempt 
to catalog him results but in a Nice Derangement 
of Epitaphs, doesn't it? I had W. pretty well in 
mind. I taught him, or went thru the motions, 
six days in the week. His languid, drawling tones, 
and the quaint remarks which used to set the 
Bible-class in a roar, weren't they all written in 
my memory? And so, too, the mild, thin face, 
which contradicted his record for fights. And 
then he became one of the heroes of the Shaw, 
and I remembered how considerately he had ex- 
plained to my feminine comprehension: "Yes, I 

84 



Last Word 85 

hated to lick that fellow, him being our preacher's 
son and his dad and mine as thick as thieves. 
But it had to be, so I did it." There was perhaps 
no contradiction between the kindliness and the 
pugnacity. It was just a difference in situation, 
and the same principle; submarines, torpedoes, 
collision, instead of the minister's son, but a clear 
duty, and courage to do it. There is always fresh 
evidence on my hundredth sheep. It is difficult 
to get thru with him. 

It is just the same with the special experiments, 
like the program, given for some social purpose. 
These projects are always on hand, and new ideas 
occur to the children so constantly that one can 
hardly keep up. We are to give a sort of fare- 
well party to our two-year commercials, who sim- 
ply cease out of the school, with no graduation or 
special recognition. My first-termers and second- 
termers give the program. I understand that the 
Swiss playlet given by the "babies" may have 
mountains made of our lunch-room tables, stools, 
and such small gear. The second-termers, mostly 
small boys, who have been reading Julius Caesar, 
proposed to collect the Latin department togas, 
and give the assassination and the funeral scenes. 
"But, to kill a noble Roman at a party — ?" I pro- 
tested mildly, when the honorable men broached 
the subject. "Aw, let usl" coaxed they. "We'll 



86 Blessing Esau 

get rubber daggers at the five-and-ten. We won't 
hurt anything." In fact, having gone so far in 
slaughter, they want to finish with Cinna, the Poet. 
Fie upon this quiet life! They want work. 

One could not say quite that of the Special 
Sixes. And yet they do work, and one gets new 
lights on them. One who was contentedly igno- 
rant of most practical applications of Grammar, 
was suddenly convinced that it made some differ- 
ence. So behold him, on a hot night, coming to 
my house with his questions and a brick of ice- 
cream. His efforts were heart-warming. He 
made sentence-diagrams. This lad has done what 
I hoped he might do; has tried his voice in pub- 
lic, and was one of our Victory Loan speakers. 
Perhaps that motivated the grammar. I am 
pleased, when I look at his V button, to think how 
little he has learned from me. He has worked 
everything out himself. I believe no one could 
take him where he didn't want to go, but nothing 
will keep him back when he starts. Another good 
thing is that my little Jazz girl was able to an- 
swer clearly when I asked her what was the mat- 
ter with her last paper. She said she had taken 
too big a subject (The Peace of Tilsit ! ) , and real- 
ized that she didn't know enough about it to make 
it clear and interesting. Her mind seems to be 
getting down a little to the ordinary speed limits. 



Last Word 87 

My do-It-to-day boy is a clear and convincing 
speaker, in our little audience; "nothing so much 
to be esteemed as a learned man, but competently 
wise." An honorable opponent from another 
class can not talk him down unless he has the 
stronger evidence. Perhaps he and the Victory 
Loan speaker (who would not talk at all at first) 
may have been the victims of premature destruc- 
tive criticism; for a smashing criticism of some 
poor thing but our own has this silencing effect 
on some of us, and why not then on less mature 
people? One may have to prune the aimless 
sprouts from the good-sized plant, but that does 
not mean beginning in March and snipping off the 
cotyledons. Another thing for which I thank 
Heaven fasting is that nobody in this class has 
ever tried in an argument to suppress a fact. The 
very "nose-bone" people are as honest as daylight. 
"That statement is — well really that's a kind of 
important point my opponent made. I think I can 
answer it in a minute, but I must get it straight- 
ened out a little first." This was said by A. who 
seemed at first full of prejudices and snap-judg- 
ments. And here is R., risking his place in the 
lunch room, to tell his teacher: "I been reading 
the other side. They sure got the dope. You 
have to hand it to 'em." And my Court-martial 
girls twittering over their magazine, exchange re- 



88 Blessing Esau 

marks like: "O girll Take that Collier. It's 
swell for your side I" "And we've got the Sun- 
day Post that has your side." Of course these 
debates had no judges' decisions, tho the class 
voted on them. Perhaps that fact more than pure 
zeal for truth may have made this generosity pos- 
sible, but I believe they do think a great deal of 
the class vote. 

Then, almost every line of thot brings me back 
to my Esaus. They are of course so numerous 
that there is almost always one of them in the 
offing. The treasuring of the note from Milton 
seemed too good to be repeated, but since then 
there have been two parallels; one was a reply to 
a note from Jean Christophe, much prized by a 
scientifically minded lad who loves his mother, but 
— well, has a different focus from hers upon the 
religious teaching of his childhood. Then, tho it 
seems a thousand miles from H's orderly, pleas- 
ant capable mother to F's womanless home, I am 
reminded of F's bit of "The Everlasting Yea." 
Not many miles from the school where I taught 
F. is a section of hopeless-looking territory sub- 
ject to overflow from the Mississippi, but itself 
overflowing with even stronger waters. Here F's 
father kept a saloon, and tried faithfully to bring 
up his motherless children. When F., who was 
the oldest, left us, he wanted to study Pharmacy, 



Last Word ^9 

but his father needed him to tend bar. F was 
woefully disappointed, and so were bs teacher , 
but it didn't do to say much about it. i let v.ar 
iyle give him my opinion, and put it safely mto 
ht notebook. (This seems a blind way to dire 
a letter, but I suppose such a letter reaches its 
destination at the psychological moment if at all. 
If the student's mind has gone back to school, cer- 
lainly not otherwise, he gets it. If not, little time 
has been wasted, and one has escaped saying a 
word out of season.) F's letter arrived, for, long 
afterward, when I attended ^ /onfirmation ^th 
a school family, I saw a youthful face above the 
crowd, and was glad to see that ^^ was F., with a 
very affirmative expression. He shook hands with 
me, saying heartily: "I found what you put into 
mvbook. That was good stuff— good stuttl 

Sometimes I too get letters, not from the de- 
parted Great, but-during a recent absence—from 
my "children." My Esaus wrote charming letters, 
telling frankly about their past experiences and 
their hopes for the future. N's letter set her most 
rich in youth before my eyes. This sparkling, 
small person walks as if she could hardly keep on 
the ground. She might pose for Silver-footed 
Thetis But her mother, a widow, has run a little 
laundry for years, and N. must help her as soon 
as possible. (So many college girls are inferior 



90 Blessing Esau 

to N. in endowments.) But she must take our 
short course, earn a little in the lunch-room, and 
be out in the world before next Christmas. 
"Must" occurs often in her story. She is more 
cheerful, tho, than the old tragedians, who so 
affected it, and indeed sees no sadness in the fu- 
ture. "So I'm to be a stenographer," she ends, 
"and here goes for being the best stenographer 
in the world." Another letter is from J., who 
reads to the blind, and has won more than one 
newspaper prize for short articles. "I have al- 
ways wanted to be a journalist," she writes. "But 
I do not see how I can go to college." And here 
is E's letter. She is a tall, delicate beauty who 
can invest a trip to a Kroger grocery with the 
charm of poetry. She worked, thru the influenza 
recess, at what the children call the rubber-plant. 
She worked on ladies' overshoes, and earned a 
good wage; "a great lift," she says, "for my 
father and mother." And this one which isn't 
written very well is from my thotful, ungrammati- 
cal T. He is rash with negatives, but loveth well 
both man and bird and beast; he is the kind of 
boy who picks up lame ducks, and does for them. 
I hope he will never meet with much unkindness. 
And this last one is from G., who writes about 
her childhood Saturdays. "We would go up on 
a hill and build tents and play Indians. We would 



Last Word 9 1 

build a small stove and make a fire and roast po- 
tatoes. When everything was green, we would 
go out under a large tree and play king and queen. 
We had a white, flat stone which we used for a 
throne. Some of us would be pages and attend- 
ants, and stand around the throne, while others 
went and gathered flowers for the queen. Some- 
times we would play fairies too." I think with 
satisfaction of this blue-eyed, dark-haired little 
fairy-queen. She is just the child to see the "wee 
folk, good folk, trooping all together." Some- 
times, when she is far away from her white stone, 
I fancy these wee folk trooping thru the office 
window, along with the smell of the river willows. 
I hope they will not lead to any errors in her 
manuscript. We have tried to make her accurate 
so that she may be useful, but I think she will be 
happier, and therefore more efficient, for all the 
aid which her school days have given to her fancy 
and humor. It is good — isn't it? — that Fancy is 
bred in so many places, and that Humor, as well 
as sleep, is sore Labor's bath. 

In thinking of Gretna, I see again that it is 
wrong to call pitying attention to our Esaus. It 
is like the proverbial crying because the ducks have 
to go barefoot. These children can perhaps teach 
us things that we haven't learned, for all our 
busy studying. Meantime, they are as happy as 



92 Blessing Esau 

anyone. They can "In litel thyng have suffilsu- 
ance." They career about the corridors as much 
like colts as the others. They crack their little 
jokes like the rest. "Here are some bad grammar 
I brang you," jibes a little girl, as she lays down 
her sheet of confessions. These are scarlet sins 
like: "I said ain't four times, and busted, and 
Gee Whiz and leave for let. I don't guess I hear 
it when I say lay for lie." No, we needn't weep 
over the Esaus and the Specials; we need only 
work over them. Perhaps it is necessary also, to 
like them. If we once start them, they will con- 
tinue. In the words of an old grammarian, whom 
they will never need to know, if they "lerne glad- 
ly and commende yt dylygently to (their) mem- 
oryes, of this begynnyng (they) shall procede 
and growe to parfyte Lyterature." And, to trans- 
late another ancient colleague: "Thru this same 
Literature, there shall be a growth of Justice and 
Happiness in human relations." 



DICTATION EXERCISES 
GRIZZLED PETER 

ARRANGED FROM LABOULAYE's FAIRY-TALES 

/DRIZZLED PETER and his wife are fond of 
^-'each other, but formerly they were like other 
happy couples in this respect; each felt over- 
worked, and each thot the other had an easy 
time of it. Neither one wanted to change this, 
but each wanted the other to appreciate it. 

Grizzled Peter is a farmer in Norway. His 
farm is cut out on the bias and slopes up behind 
the house and down in front. This is a little hard 
on his live-stock, but they seldom meet with any 
accidents. One time the cow did, — but that comes 
later in the story. When Peter's baby is old 
enough to go to school and confirmation-class, he 
can start at the front door and roll all the way 
down to school. Peter's farm-house, which holds 
on for dear life upon this long slant, has a gently- 
sloping, grassy, thatched roof, all weighted down 
with stones. Under the house is a cool cellar, 

93 



94 Blessing Esau 

where Peter's wife keeps beer of her own brewing. 
Outside there is a well, and farther off a barn, 
where they keep the cow and try to keep the pig, 
— but the pig does so like to come into the 
kitchen! Peter always used to blame his wife 
when that happened, but now he knows better. 

One day both these good people put the wrong 
foot out of bed, as folks say in Norway, and were 
very cross at breakfast. Peter groaned over his 
harvesting, and his wife complained sharply about 
her many and various house-keeping tasks. Each 
blamed the other for being discontented, and fi- 
nally Mrs. Peter said: "Say, Peter! We'll 
change places to-day; I'll go harvesting and you- 
can keep house." "All right!" cried Peter. "And 
after this perhaps you'll appreciate your poor 
husband." His wife made no reply, but went off 
to the fields singing like one of the larks which 
she saw far up in the bright sky. 

Peter didn't sing, but he began cheerfully to 
churn the cream which his wife had set out. It 
was an easy task for him, altho it made him warm 
and thirsty. By and by he went down Into the 
cellar for some beer, and was just taking the 
spigot out of a barrel to fill up his quart-can, 
when he heard a grunting and a banging above. 
"Oh, the pig!" Peter exclaimed. "My butter is 
lost and gone." Sure enough; when he burst 



Dictation Exercises ' 95 

madly into the kitchen, he found the churn over- 
turned, the room flooded with cream, and the pig 
feasting. Peter was so angry that he snatched 
off one of his heavy wooden shoes and gave the pig 
a blow upon the head that killed it instantly. This 
was a shock to Peter as well as to the pig, and it 
was several minutes before he remembered that 
he had left the beer running in the cellar. Won- 
dering what his wife would say, he ran down and 
found the barrel empty. His quart-can was full, 
tho, and that was some comfort. 

"Well, I must try again on the butter," he 
thot. "It's lucky there's plenty of cream." And 
when this second lot of butter was nearly done, 
he suddenly remembered that the cow hadn't been 
fed. On the way to the stable, he considered af- 
fairs in the kitchen, and thot that the baby might 
perhaps upset the churn during his absence. Re- 
turning to the kitchen, he fastened the churn upon 
his back, and went to the well to draw a bucket of 
water for the cow. The rope became tangled, and 
Peter stooped over to see what ailed it, when — •■ 
splash I A stream of butter and milk poured over 
his head into the well, and the churn was again 
empty. Peter shook his head over the pail of 
white-looking water which he had to offer the 
cow, and so did she. "It's too late," he told her, 
"to take you to pasture, but there's plenty of blue- 



g6 Blessing Esau 

grass growing on the roof, for we haven't had the 
goat up there for a long time. I'll put a board 
across from the ridge behind the house, and you 
can go over and eat the grass." 

Peter couldn't stay with the cow, for it was 
long past the time to start the soup for his wife 
and the other reapers. He didn't want the cow 
to fall off the roof, so he tied one end of the 
clothes-line around her horns, dropped the other 
end down the chimney, and fastened this second 
end around his ankle. "Now," he thot, "she 
can't move around much without my knowing it." 
Then he put meat and vegetables into the soup- 
kettle, and was just touching off the fire when the 
cow slipped from the roof. As she went down, 
Peter went up; straight up the chimney, feet first. 
This was very embarrassing to both Peter and the 
cow, and both lifted up their voices and called for 
help. 

Peter's wife, meantime, was tired of waiting 
for the soup, and had started for the house, sickle* 
in hand. Seeing the cow hanging by her horns, 
in what our Physics teachers call a state of un- 
stable equilibrium, she cut the rope, and, with 
one blow of her blade, landed the cow on the 
ground and Peter in the soup. Peter's sudden de- 
scent broke the soup-kettle, and dinner seemed 
far, far away when Mrs. Peter came into the 



Dictation Exercises * 97 

kitchen, and saw her husband sitting in the fire- 
place. She saw other things too; the fire was 
out, the baby was bathing in cream, the churn was 
empty and no butter was in sight, the pig lay dead, 
and a whole barrel of beer was gone. When she 
saw all that had happened, she scolded at first, 
but then she was glad to sit down and wash the 
baby, while Peter found a kettle and made more 
soup. After this they both felt better. Mrs. 
Peter was then willing to confess that reaping Is 
tiresome work, and Peter, too, acknowledged 
with a sigh that it takes brains to run a house- 
hold. 



THE JOURNEY-COMPANIONS 

FOUNDED ON THE STORY IN MEISSNER'S "AUS 
MEINER welt" 

A LITTLE girl was starting back one day to 
her father's house which was on the other side 
of the forest. The forest was a safe and beautiful 
place, in those days, and this Httle girl didn't feel 
at all afraid. She had gone only a mile or two, 
and was admiring the bright, green light that 
struck down thru the leaves, when she met a boy 
with a shining morning face. "Good morning!" 
she cried. For the expression: "Hey, Kid!" had 
not then come into good use. "Good morning," 
answered the boy. "Do you like to dance?" "O, 
yes !" answered the girl, "I wish I could dance a 
while right now." "Well, I'll play for you," said 
the boy, picking up a mouth-harp which was lying 
on the moss. So the lad played, and the child 
danced, and the birds hopped about, and the squir- 
rels turned hand-springs, all in time to that gay 
music. When they were tired and out of breath, 
the two children sat down to rest, and all the 

98 



The J ourney -Companions 99 

trees of the forest clapped their hands. "This is 
nicer than a party," said the girl. "Won't you 
tell me your name, Boy?" "My name is Pleas- 
ure," answered the boy. "I love places like this, 
but they're always asking me to parties and teas 
and circuses, and sometimes I go to the movies, 
or to big athletic events. I have to go to some- 
thing right now, miles and miles away, tho I'd 
rather stay here." "Then please come and see 
me at home. Pleasure, and get acquainted with my 
father and mother and the baby. We shall all be 
glad to see you." "Yes," said Pleasure heartily. 
"Pll come when you're not expecting me. That's 
the way I find my best welcome." So the chil- 
dren said good-bye, and followed their different 
paths thru the forest. 

About noon the little girl came to a clearing, 
where the air was fragrant with wild strawberries. 
In the shade on one side of the clearing stood 
several baskets full of the ripe fruit, and a vig- 
orous woman could be seen stooping over and 
picking the berries. "Come here, child," called 
the woman. "You must help me with this work." 
She spoke kindly enough, but the girl knew that 
she must obey. After a half-hour's work she had 
picked a pint or more, and the woman said, with 
a friendly smile: "Now, my child, you must be 
hungry for your dinner." "O, I forgot to bring 



100 Blessing Esau 

my dinner," answered the girl. "Sit down with 
me then," said the woman, "and you may share 
my luncheon and pay me in berries." This the 
child was glad to do, and as they ate together, 
the stranger seemed to become more and more 
familiar, reminding her of her own father and 
mother. After they had finished their meal and 
had rested a few moments, the little girl said 
shyly: "Thank you for calling to me. I should 
have grown faint if I hadn't had that good din- 
ner. Would you mind telling me your name?" 
The woman sighed and then smiled again. "Chil- 
dren don't like my name," she said; "at least, not 
until they know me pretty well. My name is 
Work. I'm a good friend to you children; a bet- 
ter friend than you know. Those who realize 
that seldom get into any serious trouble. You're 
not going to be afraid of Work, are you, little 
girl?" "O, no, Mrs. Work!" cried the child, get- 
tnig up and making a bob-curtsey, as children still 
do in the forest. "My parents know you, and 
they often speak of you. I'll never be afraid of 
you again." 

After the vigorous Mrs. Work had gone her 
way, the child went on, feeling more and more 
thankful that she had been made to earn her din- 
ner and eat it, for it is a long way thru this forest. 
And now the sun began to sink, and the girl knew 



The Journey-Companions loi 

that she was nearing home. While she was think- 
ing about her two new friends, she saw an old, 
sad-looking woman, standing at a turn in the 
path. The woman was carrying one heavy bas- 
ket and trying to lift another. "01 let me help 
you!" cried the child. "Don't you think I could 
lift that basket?" "See if you can't, little daugh- 
ter," said the old woman, and the child tried to 
carry the basket in her arms, but it was the heav- 
iest burden she had ever tried to bear. "We must 
lift it up high on your head," said the woman, 
"or it will bend you down to the ground." So, 
with a great effort, they lifted the basket to the 
girl's head, and she found that she could carry 
it so. The burden made her stand up straight, 
and feel grown-up and strong. Besides, she now 
noticed the beautiful colors that followed the sun- 
set, and, as the trees grew fewer, she saw the 
many bright stars coming out; sights which she 
could not have seen so well had she not been 
obliged to look up. And now they were almost 
out of the forest, and the woman said: "I know 
you are nearly home, so I will tell you about that 
load which you are carrying so bravely. My name 
is Sorrow. People hate my very name. I come 
to everybody, late or soon, and give each one 
something heavy to carry." "O, Mrs. Sorrow!" 
answered the child. "I heard my parents speak 



102 Blessing Esau 

of you, when my little sister died and we were all 
so sad." "Yes," said Sorrow. "That was a 
heavy burden and they bore it well, just as you 
are bearing yours. When people do that they 
learn to look up to Heaven and grow strong and 
wise." With that she took away the basket, and 
then said good-bye. Then the tired little girl went 
in and found her father and mother, and told 
them about her three new and yet old friends. 



BLACK DIAMOND 

FOUNDED ON A STORY FROM MEISSNER's "AUS 
MEINER welt" 

A COUNTESS once had a small Moorish 
P^ge named Diamond. He was very black, 
and the queer part of it was, that his color came 
off a little every time he washed, or was caught 
out in the rain. That first part didn't matter 
much, for Diamond was a typical nine-year-old 
boy, and not fond of scrubbing. Being caught out 
in the rain did, in the end, make a great difference 
to Diamond; for, when he was not playing to the 
countess, he sat on the high seat of her chariot, 
which was lined with white satin. Once they were 
caught in the rain, and the countess saw the ugly, 
dark stains spreading here and there on the beau- 
tiful surface. "Diamond! Diamond 1" she cried. 
"What ails the white lining?" "Madam, I can- 
not tell a lie," answered the honest little page. 
"The trouble is that my complection is not a fast 
color." "Diamond," said the countess kindly, "In 
that case I cannot keep you any longer. You are 

103 



104 Blessing Esau 

a good boy, tho, and I shall never let your parents 
suffer. Take the best violin in my palace, and go 
around everywhere and play for the country 
dances. Stay out in the rain all you can. If you 
need any help, come back and see me, and any- 
way let me hear from you. I think you may be- 
come a great musician. Time will tell." 

So Diamond accepted the violin, bade good-bye 
to his parents and the countess and went out into 
the world. The story loses him for ten years, 
and then finds him at the court of the beautiful 
Golden Princess. You see that Diamond was now 
playing before royalty. The great lady who was 
called the Golden Princess looked like a beautiful 
statue, made of gold and come to life. Many 
young princes had asked her to marry them, but 
she had always laughed at the idea. As Diamond 
played to her, he remembered that princesses 
sometimes did wed musicians, and she seemed to 
him so very beautiful that he found courage to 
tell her his story, assure her that by and by he 
would be white, and beg her to marry him when 
that time should come. The princess saw nothing 
in this but a joke, and she and her ladies laughed 
so hard at Diamond that he went away quite 
overcome with their unkindness. *'Alas!" thot 
Diamond. (For it is only recently that boys have 
said, "Aw gee I") "Alas, that I am a Moor I" 



Black Diamond 105 

From the court of the Golden Princess, where 
he had been so unhappy, Diamond went to a far 
country where he met another sort of princess, 
who was not regarded as a princess at all, and was 
only as pretty as all girls are. In this country it 
rained nearly all the time, and Diamond was soon 
white. Before this, however, he had become ac- 
quainted with the girl who wasn't a princess but 
should have been. She loved his music, loved 
his honesty and kindness, and was willing to marry 
him even tho he had to live such a roving life. 
Diamond told his wife all about the Golden Prin- 
cess, and she wasn't at all jealous. This fact, and 
his wife's goodness, which seemed to him to grow 
greater every day, led Diamond to say to her 
often: "The Golden Princess was gold only on 
the outside, but you are all gold except the out- 
side." 

Some years later. Diamond was taking his wife 
and the children back to see the countess, who was 
now an old woman. He had not been back since 
his parents had died, and the countess had never 
seen his family. At that time she had asked all 
about the Golden Princess, and had said wisely: 
"Some foolish girls don't know the difference be- 
tween a coming and a going man. But that is 
usually because they are not coming on them- 
selves." Diamond had not understood this, but 



io6 Blessing Esau 

his wife had, when he told her. And now they 
were all going together to the countess's. On the 
way they passed a big circus-tent, and saw a sign 
that said: "Come and See the Beautiful Golden 
Princess. Adults One Cent. Children Two for a 
Cent." Diamond and his wife and the children 
all went in for three cents, and Diamond was 
shocked to find that it was the Golden Princess of 
years ago, all dark and tarnished. *'0 what a 
pity!" he thot. "Her color came off too." She 
seemed to recognize him, but he went away with- 
out saying anything to her about old times, be- 
cause he felt sovTj that, while he had been get- 
ting whiter and whiter, she had been getting 
darker and darker. "That was my old prin- 
cess," he told his wife later. "Pm glad she 
laughed at me that day." "So am I," answered 
his wife. 



M 



HERBERT HOOVER, THE FOOD- 
CONTROLLER 

R. HERBERT HOOVER is now a little 

over forty years old, and came from our 
part of the country, the Middle-West. His par- 
ents died when he was young, and he was brot up 
by relatives farther west. He did not go to high- 
school, but prepared for college by himself, hav- 
ing trouble with nothing except English, and fin- 
ishing his preparation at the age of sixteen. His 
family belong to the Society of Friends, often 
called Quakers, and planned to send the boy to 
one of their church colleges. Hoover's own plan 
was to study mining-engineering, and he thot the 
best place to do this was in California. His rela- 
tives were willing that he should go to Leland 
Stanford University, but were not willing to pay 
his expenses. Hoover found little difficulty in 
earning his way, and in his senior year did the 
university organizations a service that showed his 
natural ability to conserve. The students' clubs, 
athletic, literary and musical, were always short 
of money, tho they handled a great deal, and the 

107 



io8 Blessing Esau 

students in charge were honest. Hoover saw that 
only management and cooperation were needed, 
and accordingly he formed a central committee 
representing all the clubs and providing against 
over-lapping of expenses. This solved the diffi- 
culty so well that the university has ever since paid 
a man a salary to keep up the work started by 
Mr. Hoover. 

After his graduation, the first thing that the 
young engineer did was to go into a mine as a 
common miner. This experience has enabled him 
to understand and consider the labor side, in ques- 
tions arising in his profession, and helps us to un- 
derstand why he has never in his life had a strike. 
When he had learned all that a miner has to do, 
he entered the larger work of his profession. He 
picked out the one mining-engineer under whom 
he wanted to serve, and offered to work for him 
for nothing, when there was at first no vacancy. 
Under this man he worked in several parts of the 
West, and then went to Australia. Here, in pros- 
pecting in the desert parts of the island, he learned 
a great deal about managing supplies of food and 
water. 

From Australia Hoover went to China, to be- 
come Superintendent of Mining for the govern- 
ment, which was then an empire. He and his 
wife were caught by the Boxer Uprising, a revo- 



Herbert Hoover — Food-Controller 109 

lution which entirely changed the government of 
China. Many foreigners were killed during this 
civil war, and merchants and missionaries sent 
their wives and children out of the country as far 
as possible. Mrs. Hoover, however, chose to stay 
while her husband kept the mines for which he 
was responsible, open and running. At one time 
they had to extemporize a barricade, behind which 
the Hoovers worked a rapid-fire gun. The barri- 
cade was made of bags of provisions such as rice 
and sugar, and when the danger was over they 
and their miners ate up the walls according to the 
original plan. This sounds like an incident out of 
"Haensel and Gretel," but it goes to show that 
Mr. Hoover can accomplish a great deal with a 
food-supply. 

Hoover's next business experience was discour- 
aging, but it worked out well after all. A large 
enterprise which he joined in England failed bad- 
ly, and he was the only member of the firm willing 
or able to reorganize and pay the company's 
debts. It took him six years to do this, but the 
sense of honor which he thus showed has since 
opened to him several positions of trust and in- 
fluence. He was still in England when the Euro- 
pean war broke out, and made himself useful to 
hundreds of Americans, who wanted to go home 
and suddenly found their letters-of-credit were 



no Blessing Esau 

useless. The sums advanced to these Americans 
began to come back Immediately, and Hoover and 
others who had helped him had In hand money 
for Immediate relief-work In Belgium. He and 
his co-workers bought large amounts of flour, and 
chartered boats to take it to Belgium. When all 
arrangements had been made, they asked permis- 
sion of the English government to undertake this 
work. This was the beginning of the Belgian Re- 
lief Commission, which Hoover and his associates 
managed with the greatest efficiency until our 
country entered the war. Then it was taken over 
by Holland, because it had to be done by a neutral 
power. 

(This was to be finished and brot up to date by 
the class.) 



HOW 'THIAS CAME UP IN THE WORLD* 

IN the first place 'Thias was supposed by some 
people to be half-witted. His mother hadn't 
thot he was stupid, but she died when he was 
only three and now he was seven. His father, 
Big 'Thias, was a silent man and understood the 
quiet little fellow. But now 'Thias, the father, 
was dead too. He and the son had kept house 
four years in a lonesome, but comfortable way, 
and Big 'Thias had worked hard at his dangerous 
calling of wild-hay-cutting. People in Switzer- 
land understand what that means. Many beauti- 
ful, green slopes on the Alps are too steep, and 
have too many jumping-off places to be safe for 
farming, and the wild-hay-cutters take the grass 
from these slopes and sell it to the dairy men. 
Big 'Thias had fallen while at this work and been 
picked up a hopeless cripple. He had lived just 
long enough to use up all his little savings and 
'Thias had been left to the care of the town of 
Beckenried. 

The poor guardian sent 'Thias to board with 
the Joseph family, in a little house outside the 

III 



112 Blessing Esau 

town. Father and mother Joseph were very care- 
less, slack people. If 'Thias had been a big, 
strong boy, able to take his own part in a fight, 
he would seldom have gone hungry at the Jo- 
sephs', but the Josephs' meals were not formal; 
each child usually snatched what he wanted from 
the kettle, racing off with it like a pup with a bone, 
and thus it often happened that 'Thias's share 
went to the wrong address. The result of this 
was, that 'Thias soon began to look very thin and 
his big brown eyes looked more and more fright- 
ened. 

The Josephs lived up from the village, and 
the Beckenried people saw 'Thias only on Sun- 
days when he went to confirmation class. He 
should have gone to day-school, but the Josephs 
said he was too stupid. When he went to the 
Sunday-school he passed the Vicenzes' house, and 
to look at its cheerful outside was the one pleas- 
ure of his troubled Sabbath. For confirmation 
class was hard for 'Thias; if he answered a ques- 
tion he was always wrong and if he didn't answer 
that was wrong too. Mrs. Vicenze had a feeling 
of dislike for all the Josephs because they were 
always so dirty and rude; the children had clean 
faces only once a week, for Sunday-School. 'Thias 
was shabbier than any of them but she liked him 
and sometimes called him in and gave him a cooky 



How 'Thias Came Up in the World 113 

and a cup of milk. 'Thias was dumb with delight 
whenever she did this and never really thanked 
her in words, but she felt repaid by the happy 
look on his face. 

At Sunday-school the boys all sat on their 
benches, and the girls on theirs, and the order was 
as bad as it could be. Between pinches and kicks 
'Thias could learn very little and collected a set 
of rather queer notions. What he heard about 
Heaven always reminded him of Mrs. Vicenze 
because she had sometimes told him that his 
father and mother had gone there. 'Thias 
thot it couldn't be very far away since Mrs. 
Vicenze knew so much about it. Anyway he want- 
ed to go there and find his parents. 

Once or twice 'Thias saw Franz Anton, Mrs. 
Vicenze's son, and Franz Anton seemed to 'Thias 
like all the Bible heroes rolled up into one. He 
was as big as Goliath, and ruddy and good-look- 
ing like David, and generous like Jonathan, and 
he made many mysterious trips up the mountain 
like Moses, and he had flocks and herds like Ab- 
raham, and 'Thias thought Franz Anton was as 
wise as Solomon and as good as Joseph. 

'Thias never mentioned Franz Anton to the 
other children, but before he had been at the Jo- 
sephs' many weeks he heard the children begin to 
talk about the cheese-paring at Franz Anton's. 



114 Blessing Esau 

This was to them a sort of party. They had to 
talk about It before 'Thias because they needed 
his help. This is the way these cheese-parings 
come about: the dairy men take their cows out 
to pasture in the spring, when the grass is green 
only at the foot of the mountains. As the snow 
melts farther and farther up the mountains the 
cattle are led farther up, until it is too far for the 
herdsman to come home nights. This is why well- 
to-do herdsmen, like Franz Anton, keep a com- 
fortable little summer house clear up on the moun- 
tain-top. This explains, too, why 'Thias had seen 
Franz Anton so seldom ; for he saw him only when 
he had to come to the village and sell cheese and 
buy groceries. Poor children like 'Thias seldom 
have a chance to taste Swiss cheese. When the 
cheeses are being pressed, however, little rims 
and edges of good cheese are crowded out of the 
molds, and the dairy-man has to trim them off 
before his cheeses are ready for market. Franz 
Anton was so fond of children that he invited 
them every so often to his cheese-parings. They 
kept track of the time as well as little calendars, 
and when the day came around, they would draw 
lots to see which two should watch the cows. 
The two who were chosen had to stay and all the 
rest went prancing up to Franz Anton's. Per- 
haps you think they brot some cheese back to 



How 'Thias Came Up in the World 115 

the children who watched the cows, but if you 
think that you are badly mistaken. 

The first time 'Thias heard about the cheese- 
paring was one very hot day. He was chosen one 
of the two who stayed and watched the cows. This 
was bad enough, but he felt worse when the other 
victim presently started off after the rest, shout- 
ing to 'Thias: "Hey, Dummy, you keep an eye 
on the cows." Tho 'Thias usually stayed at 
his post, this time he broke his record and pres- 
ently started up the mountain leaving the cows to 
their fate. They fared better than 'Thias, for 
they found plenty to eat, while 'Thias came toiling 
up the last steep piece of climbing, only to meet 
the other children coming back. Franz Anton 
was still standing by the door with his cheese- 
knife in his hand and a friendly smile on his face. 
'Thias had learned not to be caught crying, and 
finding a hiding place behind a little fir-tree he 
sat and sobbed until the last child was gone. "It 
isn't just the cheese-parings," 'Thias thot, 
"tho they must be very good of course and 
perhaps they're what the angels eat in Heaven. 
But all the rest of them saw Franz Anton and he 
joked with them and I wasn't there." But pres- 
ently the door opened again and his hero went 
back and forth with a big bucket until the milking 
was over and the sun was setting. Sunset makes 



Ii6 Blessing Esau 

all the snow-capped peaks beautiful rose-pink. 
Franz Anton seemed to enjoy this sight for he 
brot his supper out to the broad clean door- 
step. 'Thias too was watching the sun set and 
forgot that, little as he was, there was still enough 
of him to see by daylight. He was sitting up 
beside the tree like a small, brown rabbit, when 
Franz Anton saw him, and, before 'Thias could 
take to his heels, he found himself sitting on 
Franz Anton's knee, and that wonderful man was 
looking at him with an amused but friendly smile. 
"So, old man!" said Franz Anton, "now I can see 
what you look like. Why didn't you get here 
earlier?" "I had to watch the cows," said 'Thias 
in a still, small voice. "Well, well!" boomed 
Franz Anton's big voice. "It's too bad you didn't 
get any cheese-bits, but you must have a bite with 
me." 'Thias silently thot of a verse he had 
been taught Sunday. It was: "Blessed are they 
who shall eat bread in the Kingdom of Heaven." 
'Thias had believed this, but now he knew it. 
Franz Anton's pieces of bread were an inch thick 
and the butter in proportion. They were some- 
thing to gaze at before one bit into them. Blessed, 
yes blessed, are they who eat bread and butter 
and ham, and drink a big mug of milk, and then 
another and see the sun setting and hear a friendr 
ly voice. 



How 'Thias Came Up in the World 117 

When the sociable meal was over Franz An- 
ton said: "Now, 'Thias, the moon is coming up 
and you must run home or the Josephs will be 
anxious about you." "No, sir, they won't be," 
said 'Thias cheerfully and then remembering his 
manners: "Yes, sir! And this was nicer than the 
cheese feast, — and — and — thank you!" But 
'Thias went only a little way and then came back 
and hid, hoping to see Franz Anton once more. 
After about an hour, Franz Anton came out and 
looked away off toward Beckenried and said 
aloud: "God bless you ! Good night 1" 'Thias 
knew that this was meant for Franz Anton's 
mother, but he felt that he too had a share in it 
and went home happy. 

Next day 'Thias went to Sunday-school, and the 
pastor asked questions about the last lesson. 
"Now, 'Thias," he began, "I know we can't ex- 
pect much of you, but this is a very easy question; 
where do the good people go when all the troubles 
of this sad life are over?" "To Franz Anton's 
to supper I" 'Thias answered, but he was inter- 
rupted by a howl of derision, and for two or three 
days the children talked of nothing else, but what 
a crazy idiot 'Thias was. 

Then there were several terribly hot days, but 
each evening 'Thias crept off as soon as he had 
brot his cows in and climbed clear up to Franz? 



ii8 Blessing Esau 

Anton's little tree, and, silent and unseen, he 
watched Franz Anton do his evening work. The 
third evening it seemed that something was 
wrong; the cottage was deserted, the sun set, the 
full moon shone out, and still Franz Anton did not 
come. 'Thias grew more and more uneasy and 
finally set off down the road to Beckenried. Be- 
fore long he saw in the moonlight a dark figure, 
lying across the path. His heart almost stopped, 
but he went bravely on and found that it was 
indeed Franz Anton. He was not dead, for his 
head was very hot and he murmured discon- 
nected words, and sometimes groaned pitifully. 
Finally his dry lips seemed to form the word, 
"water." 'Thias sped back to the cottage and 
found a clean roller-towel and the big milk 
bucket. This he filled at the spring, and, heavy 
as the bucket was, he was soon sitting beside his 
friend giving him little sips of water, and keeping 
the wet towel around his head. Franz Anton 
gave a sigh of relief, murmured, "dream . . . 
angel," and then seemed to fall asleep quite com- 
fortably. 

'Thias stayed with his friend all night, refilling 
the bucket and keeping the towel always cold. He 
had the great joy of seeing Franz Anton's sleep 
grow easier. When the day dawned the invalid 
opened his eyes and gradually realized what had 



How 'Thias Came Up in the World 119 

taken place. He had carried a heavy load down 
to Beckenrled, and had been overcome with the 
heat on his way back. But for 'Thias he would 
probably have died. "Old man," he said present- 
ly, "a good thing you happened to come up to- 
night. How long have you been here?" 'Thias 
forgot to be shy: "Been here all night," he said. 
"I — I come here every night, but I didn't let you 
see me because I — I didn't come for the bread 
and butter and things, and last night you didn't 
come and didn't come so I thot something bad 
might have happened to you, and I found you, and 
got the bucket and towel and stayed all night. 
Was that all right?" This had a strange effect 
on Franz Anton. If he had not been a man, and 
the most wonderful of men, 'Thias would have 
thot there were tears in his eyes. "Yes! That 
was all right, 'Thias," he said. "I dreamed God 
sent an angel and I think my dream came true. 
We'll see if we can get up to the house, and then 
if you can keep awake long enough to go down 

and get my mother ." To help his friend 

was like Heaven to 'Thias, and as they went slow- 
ly up to the cottage he had to tell Franz Anton 
about the blunder he had made in the Sunday- 
school class. "But if you thot I was an an- 
gel," he said, "perhaps it wasn't such a bad mis- 
take." 



I20 Blessing Esau 

Franz Anton's mother was overcome with dis- 
may and relief at the same time, and kept say- 
ing, "Thank God I Thank God!" She loaded 
two baskets with good things such as 'Thias had 
never seen before and they returned to the moun- 
tain cottage together. Franz Anton had slept 
quietly ever since 'Thias had left him and now 
felt quite like himself tho a little weak. His 
mother cooked him a wonderful breakfast, but the 
one who enjoyed it most was 'Thias. He had 
never seen such eggs, pan-cakes or honey, and that 
was another thing that reminded him of Sunday, 
for he had heard something about the flowing of 
milk and honey, in the Celestial City. 

Mrs. Vicenze interrupted his thots by ask- 
ing: " 'Thias, would you hate to leave the Jo- 
sephs?" "No, ma'am!" he answered promptly. 
She went on, "I can't bear to have you back in 
that dirty, slack house. You look so like your 
pretty mother, and her house was always as neat 
as wax. It would grieve her even in Heaven to 
see you." 'Thias felt a lump in his throat, for 
he now realized that Heaven was farther off than 
he had thot. "But I haven't anywhere else to 
live," he said. " 'Thias, you can come to our 
house," Mrs. Vicenze said, "and then you can go 
to school." "And he can stay up here in the sum- 
mer," put in Franz Anton. At these words 'Thias 



How 'Thias Came Up in the World 121 

understood how Elijah felt when the chariot came 
and took him suddenly up to Heaven. 

And now I must tell you that the people in 
Beckenried all speak of 'Thias now as one of the 
most promising boys in town. The Josephs don't 
call him "Dummy." Their new name for him is 
"Smarty." But 'Thias tries not to put on airs 
even when he helps Franz Anton at the cheese- 
parings. After all, none of it is his doings, he 
thinks; it's really Franz Anton who is so smart, 
and Mrs. Vicenze who is so good. 

* Altered from Johanna Spy ri's "Vom This, der doch Et- 
was Wird." 



